FALL 2002 Issue #12 $5 95

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0 0744?C 8751-0 1 N THE HEART of THE B EAST PUPPET AND MASK THEATRE

GUEST PRODUCTIONS: Circus Contraption September 13 & 14,2002

Compagnie Coatimundi September 20 & 21,2002

COMPANY PRODUCTIONS: Seed: Awesome Vessel of Power September 27 & 29,2002

Between the Worlds December 17 - 22,2002

Queen Nanny, Queen Nanny! January 17 - February 9,2003

From the - Inside Out March 7 - 21,2003

MayDay Parade and Festival May 4,2003

IN THE HEART OF THE BEAST PUPPET AND MASK THEATRE 1500 East Lake Street · Minneapolis, Minnesota 55407 · (612) 721-2535 · www.hobt.org Editor Andrew Periale HC74 Box 307 ~UPPETRY INTERNATIONAL Strafford, NH 03884-9622 [email protected] the puppet in contemporary theatre, film & media Designer/Assistant Editor issue no. 12 Bonnie Periale

Editorial Advisor Leslee Asch OVERTURE Historian The Editor's Page 2 John Bell

ACT ONE Media Review Editor Donald Devet Puppets and Opera bu John Bell ...... 4 Advertising Large Role for a Little Chicken by Meg Daniel ...... 10 Tricia Berrett Haydn at Esterhaza by Stephen Carter ...... 14 [email protected] Bridge of Wings by Stephen Kaplin & Kitang-Yii Fong 22 Distribution Carol Epstein-Levy -- INTERMISSION -- Kathee Foran Peter Sellars with John Lithgow, introduction by Norman Frisch 28 Advisors Vince Anthony

Aer Two Meg Daniel Red Beads: Mabou Mines with a Twist, reuiew b!-/ Donald Devet .34 Norman Frisch Stephen Kaplin Barber of Seville by Amy Trompetter ... 36 Mark Levenson Bob Nathanson ACT THREE Mark Sussman Hanne Tierney Puppet History: MacKaye & Bufano by John Bell 40

Puppetru International is a publication of OLIOS UNIMA-USA, Inc., American Center of the Short takes on Puppet Opera during all scene changes: UNION INTERNATIONALE de la Fosser, Pollitt, UConn, Forman Brothers, Old Trout and more. MARIONNETTE (known as "UNIMA").

Board of Directors, UNIMA-USA, Inc. THE REVIEWS ARE IN Founding President JIM HENSON The Secret Life of Puppets reviewed by Preston Foerder .... 43 President Marianne Tucker Gog and Magog reviewed bu John Bell ... . 44 Tricia Berrett. Mickey Aronoff Wayang Golek reviewed by Dassia Posner .... 45 Carol Epstein-Levy "Worlds of Imagination" video reviewed bu jWark Levenson 48 Kathee Foran. Lynne Jennings Karen Konnerth IN MEMORIAM: Trowbridge, Mirbt 52 Mary Robinette Kowal Randel McGee Michelle O'Donnell UNIMA-USA Production Steven Widerman

c/o Center for Puppetry Arts Terrie Ilaria, Lillian Meier Ex-Officio Board Members 1404 Spring Street, NW STEINWAY STUDIO Kittery, ME General Secretary Vincent Anthony* Atlanta, GA 30309 USA Publications Andrew Periale 404-873-3089 Gary Stratton Bonnie Periale www.unima-usa.org G PRINT FIRST Consultants & Leslee Asch Portland, ME *Councilors Cheryl Henson* Allelu Kurten .. Michael Nelson Roman Paska* -*'*. <17 Lia Powell ON THE COVER: NATIONAL Lisa Rhodes Carter Family Marionettes ENDOWMENT Bart Roccoberton* FOR THE ARTS (see article by Nancy L. Staub* Stephen Carier, p. 14) - This project is supported, in part, by an award Web Guru Donald Devet from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Editor's Page-

As for myself, I was exposed to opera through recordings and radio broadcasts at an early age; 1 was an Italian- American kid growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s- so what else is new'? 1 can't say that 1 was really engaged by this music- sung fupp elig anct Opera in a language 1 didn't understand for hours upon hours- but it certainly became a part of me. Even after realizing that 1 was hopelessly addicted to a life in the theatre, I of Tristan newdmiw didn't really get opera until seeing a production 'Nialia Terik\a: '[Co pidlito und /solde at the Met. Four hours of Birgit Nilson's pow- atto. "1*Foi -za dd 'Doullo " Lilli erful ( if corpulent) isolde , the climax of which saw her as they sang their hearts opera Codi D-67,41(67. comforting the stricken Tristan out while rising (with the assistance of substantial hydrau- lies) to the height of twenty feet or so above the stage fciolo: '10 cidoro la illitai€a diTerdiiii floor, until they appeared to be sitting on the edge of the quallinque» foiliia! + planet, outlined against the Milky Way, well ... it was dazzling. And dizzying. For a young man whose models in the theatre had been Grotowski and Schumann, the opulence of this production was unspeakably obscene, and for my next trip to Italy, I have been lis- In preparation yet deeply affecting: truly a guilty pleasure. tening to taped language lessons. I never hear that last line without wondering if Paolo had ever seen Verdi's Historically, puppetry's relationship to opera has proven performed with puppets. work resilient /see Bell: Puppets and Opera, p. 41. Both bring together many different art forms into a synthesized whole. as trying to define * Maria Theresa: I cried in the last act. La Forza Attempting to define opera is as tricky del Destino \s such a tragic opera. puppetry. We generally think of opera as that which has evolved from the 16th century form of Italian theatre in Paolo: I adore Verdi's music, in whatever form! which the text is sung rather than spoken. But is Peking Opera not also opera? The music may sound strange to -The Linguaphone Institute, lesson 15 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 3

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unaccustomed Western ears, but Kuang-Yu Fong and There have been theatres which have specialized in op- Stephen Kaplin have been working on a way of translat- eras performed as exquisite miniatures of their human ing its tales. movement conventions and music into a counterparts. Chiefamong these are certainly the Salzburg genre which is accessible to an American audience /see Marionettes. with their own theater and full season of Fong, Kailin: Bridge of Wings, p. 221. (mostly ) Mozart operas . The Peterborough (NH ) Mari - onettes modeled themselves after the famous Austrians Today, manifestations of puppet opera seem to be every- and did well, too, until a fire robbed the players of pup- where. Among these are revivals of baroque and classi- pets, sets and theater in a single night. Yet other theatres cal works written for puppets, such as those written by have eschewed imitation of the human opera, as in Susan Haydn for the marionette theater at Esterhaza l,yee Carter: Vitucci's Love's Fowl, the story of La Pulcina Piccola Haydn at Ester+taza, p. 14]. or the hilarious folk opera (Chicken Little) /see Daniel: Large Role for a Little mounted by the Forman Brothers concerning the mis- Chicken, p. JO], or The Red Reads [ see Devet: The Chaos haps of two bungling brickmasons. There are also con- Factor, p. 34] by Basil Twist and Mabou Mines . temporary works which seem to be popping up everywhere these days. John Luther Adams' second opera, The list of productions, not to mention the forms they Young Caesar, was originally written for puppets. take, is almost endless, and you'll find many more ex- Delfeayo Marsalis recently worked on the puppet opera amples in these pages. Jaz and Jazmine Meet the Jazz Band, which was commissioned by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for 2002 My own expertise on the subject would easily be out- performances. Barbara Benary (Ph.D., Wesleyan. ethno- shone by any Italian you might stop randomly on a street musicology ) has written a two hour score for Karna: a in , say, Parma. But the final aria of Turandot inevitably Shadow Puppet Opera based on Indonesian wayang kulit. makes me cry, while the Forman Brothers' brickmasons There is even a recent Viking puppet opera, Beowulf, by will always make me laugh- and in a deep, transforming Calgary's Old Trout Puppet Workshop Isee sidebar, p. 71. way. This has led me to the inescapable conclusion: "Pup- pets and Opera? . . . Yeah, that works !" A film which Bonnie and I revisit from time to time is the 1944 Bluebeard, in which John Carradine plays Gaston Morel who, in addition to being a suspected se- rial killer, presents puppet operas with a large cast of beautiful marionettes.

Photos, left to right: 1 ) Salzburg Marionettes, 2) Peterborough Marionettes, 3) Old Trout Puppet Workshop, 4) Opera in Focus, 5) 18th C. Pantalone [see Carter, p. 14], 6) Forman Brothers -Andrew Periale 4 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL fupp dr% m,d Op eret

John Bell WILLIAM B. FOSSER by The spectacular promise of opera in the European tradition has been its full embrace of all the elements of western theater: the possibility that on one stage in one evening an audience could experience music, text. and image through the live presence of performers. musicians, sets, and costumes. The combination of all these elements produces a richness that wants to fulfill the 7 potential of the proscenium stage, that innovation of the Italian Renaissance which sought to represent passion and truth by state-ot-the-art stage technology and 1 the alluring illusion of reality (or realization of fantasy) made possible by combining a framed performance space with an intriguing new trick of the eye called perspective. Opera, as developed by composers. performers, and designers from the seventeenth century to our day, has created one of the most long-lasting traditions Bill Fosser began working with puppets in of western theater because its potential to create a stun- 1939, and he is still at it today. His love of ning-and live-"virtual reality" has, despite the onslaught opera was certainly fostered by his early work of even further technological innovations. been unsur- at the Victor Puppet Opera under Ernest Wolff passed. Because opera by definition wants to include at Chicago's Kungsholm restaurant. Fosser all forms of live theatrical communication. it is not sur- worked there in 1947, and then again in 1950 prising that puppets, masks, and performing objects under Fredrik Chramer. have been an important part of its history and contem- Although he worked there again as its porary potential. director in 1963, he had, by that time, already When. in the mid-nineteenth century. Richard begun his own company- Opera in Focus. As Wagner excitedly defined opera as a combination of all the new owners of the Kungsholm lacked a the art (Gesamtkunstwerk), he was simply codifying, passion for keeping the puppet theater in good and attempting to define the future of, a form which repair, Fosser left the company in 1966 to had already succeeded in taking all the possible tricks resume a career in the film industry. His of theater and putting them together on stage. The fact dream, though, remained his beloved puppets, thatAmy Trompetter should direct The Barber of Seville and finding them a permanent home. as a puppet opera at the Arts at St. Ann's in Brooklyn in At last, on the grounds of the Rolling 1983, or that Julie Taymor would choose to include pup- Meadows Park District, his exquisite rod pets in her 1998 Houston Grand Opera production of puppets perform selections from operas in a Wagner's The Flying Dutch,nan, seems natural because wonderful little 65-seat theater. There is a puppets and masks (and other objects used on the stage) small troupe of master puppeteers, with have always been important tricks of the theater, not Fosser in command. only in western traditions but performance cultures throughout the world. The combination of opera with For more information, see the Puppetry puppets is not new. In fact, puppets and opera have en- Journal, Summer 1998, and May-June 1979, joyed a close, if perhaps unheralded, relationship for also a paper by Julie Morrison. centuries. What I would like to do in what follows is www. sp.uconn.edu/-wwwsfa/Morris 1.html sketch out some elements of that relationship. PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 5

The Marionette Opera Tradition A glance at the bills of bigger Italian marionette theaters European opera was born in sixteenth-century Florence, an pre- effort by a group of history-obsessed artists and intellectu- of the late nineteenth century might suggest that they als called the "Camerata dei Bardi" to revive (or reinvent) sented a large operatic repertoire. with Aida at the top of Greek tragedy, which they knew had been a theater con-~bin- the list. In practice such shows cashed in on the success of ing music, song, over-life-sized masks, and splendid stage popular operas, and were based on cheap fiction drawn very machines. Early Italian operas, designed by such artists as loosely from the libretti, perhaps with popular tunes from Buontalenti, incorporated the marvels and techni- Bernardo the operas as incidental music. cal skill of Renaissance court theater and street performance in thrilling baroque spectacles featuring frequent set changes, This marionette tradition of opera continued in the early masks, and over-life-sized puppets of giants, dragons, sea twentieth century in many European cities and lives today in monsters and other fantastic creatures. the resplendent productions of the Salzburg Marionette The- While large-scale puppets were present at the birth ot ater. In the beginning of the present century, however, the grand-scale opera. and in fact constitute a traditional ele- possibilities of opera and puppets presented themselves in a ment of the form, another aspect of the puppet-opera con- somewhat different way to modern sensibilities as a new nection is the tradition of small-scale puppet operas begin- means of making modernist theater. ning in the seventeenth century. Marionettes. the diminutive jointed figures operated through strings by puppeteers standing above and behind them. have been opera performers throughout Europe , at least, since a director named La Grille University of Connecticut presented marionette operas in the Marais district of Paris in 1676. Marionette theater has long been intertwined with live theater in Europe, since the times when italian commedia dell'arte troupes alternated performances of the same shows from life-sized masked performers to the smaller puppet stage, and a similar symbiotic relationship characterizes the traditions of marionette opera. The civic morals of Rome from the mid-eighteenth century, for example, dictated that large-scale theaters (including opera houses) be allowed to function only during the licensed mayhem of Carnival. But puppet theaters were permitted to operate all year round, and it was in these venues that eighteenth- and nineteenth- century Roman audiences could see the operas of Rossini and others. But opera with marionettes was not simply a small-scale replica of a life-sized original. The most famous P marionette/opera connection in Europe was that between

Franz Joseph Haydn and puppet maker Pietro Travaglia, who 4 \ both worked in the Hungarian court of Prince Nicholas Es- terhazy between 1773 and 1780. There, Haydn wrote five operettas specifically for puppets, including Philemon and Baucis. Genoveva, and Dido. These were all performed on Travaglia's marionette stage while the singers stood behind the scenes. Throughout the nineteenth century, marionette theaters throughout Europe performed operas by Haydn, Mozart, Offenbach and other composers, in addition to their The Queen of the Night, from Mozart's Die repertoire of popular stage hits and variety show spectacle . ZauberfUite (The Magic Flute). Under the direction Although many operas were expressly written for mari- of Frank Ballard, The University of Connecticut onettes, however, some puppet operas were very different puppetry arts program produced many operas, from their life-sized counterparts. As John McCormick and operettas and musicals. Bennie Pratasik observe in their 1998 history, Popular Ptip- pet Theater in Europe, 12900-1914. 6 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

THE BAROQUE OPERA Modernist Puppet Operas Nineteenth-century opera. of course, was reshaped and redefined by Richard Wagner, who, not unlike the Ital- ians who invented opera in the sixteenth century. declared that Greek tragedy, mythic heroes, and folk culture could provide the heady, aristocratic art of opera with a solid and searching base from which it could help define modern culture. Although. like Mozart, Wagner continued Italian traditions by using puppet dragons and other spectacular devices in his operas, Wagner did not proselytize for a puppet opera. His analysis of opera asa union of all the arts, and his call for a redefinition of European opera as a civic, even moral event rather than a "clink- ing, twinkling, glittering, glistening show" helped inspire an opening of European stage sensibilities to other forms. For example. in the 188(}s French playwright and novelist Judith Gautier began to present innovative performances with actors and with puppets in Paris. Her is adapted from an 18th Century folk writing and theater work reflected an expanded definition of opera concerning a chimney built by the world typical of the late-nineteenth century. a definition cultures as well as popular Euro- two bumbling masons. It begins to fall which could include Asian pean traditions such as puppet theater. She met, was fascinated down even before it is completed. Tiny by, and had a long affair with Wagner, who gave her permis- marionettes play in an exquisite sion to present some of his works. For this reason, the French of a baroque theatre (setting: miniature premiere of Parsiful was performed by puppets in 1898 at and Jan Marek), with the puppeteers Gautier's Petit Thdatre in Paris. A reviewer wrote: crew as life-sized doubles of the characters. The music, by Karel Loos, The public? Invited guests. The actorsi Puppets made of wax. string quartet was newly adapted from The work'? Parsifal. Two performances only, perhaps three. to cembalo by Vitezslav Janda. Pup- For this, Mine. Judith Gautier has written a new introduc- petry by Milan, Matij and Petr tion. For a year she molded her thirty or forty figurines with Forman. Of the Forman Brothers only patient skill and fashioned joints and springs to move them. two men are brothers, though all three artists anonymously painted the sets.l 1 Literary men are Forman... men. As stated in Illustrious I...1 a prince their brochure: "It is not allowed to be greats coveted the honorof serving as stagehands; performed when the number of specta- sang in the chorus and a noble lady I...] came to lend her tors will be less than two. with the talents to a wax puppet which moves but does not talk. exception of family members, the dentist Mr. Maros, and Mr. President." Gautieis production of Parsifal was part of a radical re- began in the 1890s with A brilliant and rollicking good time! definition of European theater which continues to this day (Ed. j the Symbolist movement in France and in the traditional avant-garde work of such North American directors as Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage, Peter Schumann, Peter Sellars. Elizabeth Lecompte, and Julie Taymor. The avant- garde redefinition of European forms, as Judith Gautier'ss work suggests, meant that artists of all disciplines opened themselves up to be influenced not only by high-art traditions, but also by low-culture and folk traditions (of which puppet and mask PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 7

theaters have always been a major element): by Asian, African, and indigenous American culture. and by an understanding of machines and machine culture as legitimate aesthetic influences. An early and famous ex- % ~'4*' p ample of these avant-garde performance trends was the 3, work of Edward Gordon Craig, an English symbolist who put fear into the heal t of the European theater world by suggesting that puppets could function on stage®44 \1 VIKING as well as humans, if not better. Craig's theories were 4 based on his sense of Javanese wayang kulit puppet PUPPET theater, Japanese bunraku puppet theater. and an ap- al : preciation of traditional European puppets like Punch -- OPERA and Judy, but his ideas were (and are to this day) de- 1/ .\ \ P rided by theater makers to whom any puppet or mask is a threat to the sanctity of the unadorned human performer. The critical view of Craig sees him as a theorist .ek:, who could never make his strange ideas work onstage, but historian Christopher Innes has pointed out that Beowulf is the new offering from Calgary's Old Trout Craig realized many of his ideas in a number of turn- Puppet Workshop. The show is based on the epic poem, of-the-century operatic productions. Craig turned to the Beowulf, composed almost 1 ,300 years ago. seventeenth-century operas of Henry Purcell, and to- Co-creator Judd Palmer says that the production gether with Martin Shaw's Purcell Operatic Society, he is the company's first attempt to get at some sort of designed and directed Purcell 's Dido and Aeneas with beauty through puppetry, "but it's definitely going to masks. and similarly directed Mandel 's Acts and Galatea include the crazed hallucinations and grand metaphysi- in a stylized production featuring stage objects as dy- cal themes traditionally involved in our shows." namic theatrical presences. The group originally discussed writing a story about the Viking discovery of North America. The more Avant-Garde Puppet Operas Palmer thought about it, the more he realized that what The ties of twentieth-century opera to the avant-garde he really wanted to tackle, was the heroic tale of the and to puppet theater are most apparent in connection Swedish prince. with composers Igor Stravinsky. Erik Satie, and Manuel "We're doing this thing partly because it's kind of de Falla. Stravinsky's orchestral works, especially in hip right now- because of Seamus Heaney's new trans- productions by Diaghilev's Bullets Russes, regularly lation. Also, we're in a time of war, and it's a deeply included masks and puppets, and Stravinsky's radically penetrating poem about [that]." different music for opera and oratorio inspired design- Beowulfis the earliest known Anglo-Saxon poem, ers to try radical experiments in form which, unlike the and was resurrected during the First World War as a marionette opera traditions, did not attempt to present rallying cry for British troops. The two-part poem tells small-scale versions of grand opera as much as create the story of a brave prince who rids a Danish kingdom new works expressly for puppet and mask theater. Thus of an evil monster and succeeds to the throne before in 1918. Stravinsky's anti-war Histoire du Soldat was fighting one last battle with a fire-breathing dragon. first presented by George and Ludmila Pitoeff at Palmer is finding that, despite its age, the poem Lausanne's Municipal Theater in Switzerland in a pro- still resonates in today's society: "The thing that's fas- duction featuring masks by Rend Auberjonois, and then cinating about it, is that the damn thing is 1,000 years in Zurich with marionettes by Otto Morach. A land- old and yet, it's still within us, " he says. "It's still in the mark puppet opera production was the 1931 American way we bomb the caves in Afghanistan, the way we premiere of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex. which Robert conceptualize our enemies." Edmond Jones directed at New York's Metropolitan Opera with over- life- sized marionettes built by master [adaptedfrom a piece in The Calgary Sun, 8/11/021 puppeteer Remo Bufano. Bufano, who, together with Jones. had been strongly influenced by Gordon Craig, The Old Trout is in Calgary, Alberta: www.theoldtrouts.org 8 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

PHILOMEN AND BAUCIS IN NEW YORK It was in the 1970s that the Orchestra of St. Luke's (NYC) had Haydn's libretto for Philomenand Baucis translated into English. For a cast, they relied on Nick Coppola, who supplied a full crew of marionette actors. Over 20 years later, they remounted the production. This time, they tapped UConn alum Barbara Pollitt for the directorial chores. Pollitt designed the puppets and masks for the show as well. She also did a great deal of work on the libretto- the original translation had been incomplete- though this work was not credited. She as- sembled a wonderful production team, notably set designer Clarke Dunham. The production which l saw (on video- tape, alas) was from 1999. Singers, actors, puppeteers and musicians were all first rate. Pollitt's understanding of puppetry clearly informed the way she coached the actors' movements, and this really paid off in their effectiveness; with the large masks and the large hands (ex- tending beyond the actors' own hands), the actors essentially became pupppets. Though receiving training at the UConn Puppetry Arts program- a place where (in those days) opera flourished- Pollitt says that opera was never taught there, and that puppetry students who didn't already have a background in the art form were left to fend for themselves. Greater influences were Albrecht Roser (visiting professor at UConn), Joan Baixas and Leszek Madzik (both at the lIM in Charleville-MtziBres). A real connection between puppetry and music was made during the bunraku training Pollitt received while working on the Warrior Ant with Lee Breuer and Yoshida Tamamatsu. Pollitt says that the fact that Haydn wrote this opera with puppets in mind made her job a little easier: Immortals toss lightning bolts, animals elude their masters and disembodied souls fly through the ether before they are brought back to life. This production of Philemon and Baucis was remounted in 2002, with certain improvements. There is even talk of mounting the production again- and why not? St. Lukes already has a substantial investment in the puppets, costumes, scenery and script. 1 , for one, hope they do. [Ed. 1

suspended his puppets in the air over the heads of the singers Lion King. In addition, Taymor populated the stage with a on stage. Puppeteer Bil Baird was one of the operators, and giant moving disk. and with over-life-sized rod-puppet birds he wrote that he had to run ten feet across the stage wings just reminiscent of the work of puppet director Peter Schumann. to raise one puppet arm in a graceful arc. Schumann himself, who by starting the Bread and Puppet Oedipus Rex has continued to inspire puppeteers. Julie Theater in 1963 redefined American puppet theater as " seri- Taymor directed a version of the opera in Japan, with Jessye ous," po litically active theater for adults as well as children, Norman as Jocasta. and dancer Min Tanaka performing lithe directed Oedipus Rex in Stuttgart in 1995. He used life-sized acrobatics onstage. In this production (for which Seiji Ozawa and over-life-sized masks, cardboard cutout figures. and four- conducted the Tokyo Philharmonic), Taymor placed puppet teen-foot-tall puppets in a production comparing Oedipus's heads on top of the singers' own heads, producing a simulta- tragic struggle with fate to that of imprisoned American black neous presence of puppet and performer later echoed in The activist Mumia Abu-Jamal. PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 9

Like Stravinsky, Erik Satie also sought a radical re- Landowska on harpsichord, used life-sized marionettes (includ- definition of European music, but Satie's works had a sly ing a figure of Cervantes) who watched smaller puppets per- effervescence different from the Russian composer's radi- form the play-within-a-play excerpt from Don Quixote. The New cal frontal assaults. Perhaps this was related to Satie's 1880% York Times called the production " an occasion of uncommon work as a pianist at the Chat Noir cabaret in 1880s Paris, interest," which "packed Town Hall with one of the most bril- where he accompanied lithe and lyrical shadow puppet liant audiences of the season." pieces created by symbolist artists. Satie wrote Genevii,ve The twenties and thirties trend of producing new. mod- de Brabant. a short opera for puppets which took its melo- ernist puppet and mask operas in the United States was rein- dramatic story of a mistreated wife from one of the most forced in 1932 by performances of Carlos Chtivez Ramirez's popular puppet shows in Europe. Genevi2've was given a H.P at Philadelphia's Metropolitan Opera House, in a produc- production in Paris in 1926 by the avant-garde Mascotte tion designed by Mexican artist Diego Rivera. The title of the workshop, with marionettes designed by Manuel-Angeles opera stood for horsepower, and it coincided with Rivera's in- Ortiz . Many consider Satie' s masterpiece to be Socrate, a dustrial murals for Henry Ford in Detroit. Leopold Stokowski "symphonic drama" based on Plato's dialogues about the conducted the orchestra for this production for which Rivera, death of Socrates. Satie's rich, heady work was presented according to his autobiography, designed masks, puppets, sets in 1936 at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum (where the and objects depicting "a coconut tree, a bag of money, horse- Gertrude Stein/Virgil Thomson opera Four Saints iii Three power, downtown New York, a girl and a boy from Tijuana, a Acts had premiered two years earlier) in a ground-breaking banana, an American girl, a pineapple, sailors, sugar cane, a production designed by sculptor Alexander Calder. During captain, tobacco, and cotton." his 1920s stint as an avant-garde American sculptor in Paris, In the above l have tried to show how intertwined puppets Calder had built and performed a miniature puppet circus and opera have been over centuries of opera history. Iii our cen- with wire figurines (now in the collection of the Whitney tury, the United States especially has been a place where pup- Museum in New York ), but for Soc rate, Calder chose to pet operas have found sporadic support in remarkable, if per- populate the stage with over-life-sized figures. However, haps little-noted, productions. The forms of puppet opera un- these were not puppets in any traditional sense of the word. dertaken by Bufano, Calder, and Rivera (perhaps their produc- Instead, they were abstract moving sculptures: gleaming, tions are too unique to label a tradition) were continued after rotating hoops; a brilliant red disc rising and turning; and a World War Two with the development of avant-garde work by monumental tlat column black on one side and white on such designers as Robert Wilson,whowasinfluencedby a 197()s the other. During the length of Satie 's music, these moving revival of Calder's production of S()crate. Wilson always seems sculptures slowly played across the stage. "The whole to have worked on the scale of opera, but with such unconven- thing," Calder wrote, " was very gentle, and subservient to tional material (Philip Glass's music for example) that the tra- the music and the words." dition-bound New York opera world basically ignored his work A fascinating and concentrated effort to make small- for decades, forcing him to more receptive European opera scale modern puppet opera was undertaken in Spain by stages. Now, as some recent productions show, adventuresome writer Federico Garcia Lorca and composer Manuel de arts organizations and opera houses are once more embracing Falla. In the 192()s and thirties, the pair collaborated on a the possibilities of puppets performing opera. This development number of puppet opera productions combining traditional may seem like a new invention to some, but it is in fact a return stories and puppet forms with a symbolist sensibility. In to a tradition that is as old as opera itself, a tradition that for 1922, de Falla wrote /f/ Retablo de Maese Pedro, an opera better rather than worse seems to require periodic renewal and based on the puppet show described in Cervantes's Don re- invention . Quixote. The following year de Falla and Lorca produced a series of short operas for hand puppets or tlat cut-out pup- A version Of this article appeared in the Fall. 1998 issue of Opera pets, including more works based on Cervantes, as well as Cues, a publication of the Houston Grand Opera. a traditional Christmas play (Misterio de los Reyes Magos) and classic work from Calderon de la Barca (The Constant Prince). El Retablo de Maese Pedro wa~ soon atter pre- Mm , B~ ~j~ GOODFOLK PUPPETS sented in Paris and Zurich. and in 1925 received its Ameri- Puppets can premidre in a production by Remo Bufano in New York Handcrafted City's Town Hall . Bufands production, in collaboration with / 9~~NE *1. 2 .for People at Play the League of Composers, and an orchestra featuring Wanda I jj j~ 4 ~#11 P.O. Box 330, West Liberty, IA 52776 10 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL LA*c Roh ~04 A-0/140

by v Little, now known as Meg Daniel La Pulcina Piccola. In 1984, Susan Her exploit s are re- Vitucci decided to enacted by Il Teatro create a puppet show Repertorio de lie as a birthday present Mollette (The for her fi ve year old Clothespin Reper- nephew. A col- tory Theatre), a ver- league's penchant for satile cast of puppets made of styrofoam chicken jokes led her & f to choose the story of balls, felt, and Chicken Little as the wooden clothespins. subject, and her The libretto is writ- mother's collection ten and performed, of clothespin Christ- in Italian, by Vitucci, mass ornaments from who also manipu- church bazaars sug- lates the puppets on gested a simple a table top stage in means of construe- full view of the au- tion. Once she began, however, the piece quickly took dience. Love's Fowl features an original score by award- on a life of its own. Vitucci's nephew got Legos that winning composer Henry Krieger, whose credits include year, and the birthday present he never received be- the Broadway shows Drecinigirls and Side Show. Krieger came Love's Fowl, a miniature grand opera that has accompanies Vitucci on the piano and lends his voice garnered critical acclaim and a devoted following. for the male roles and crowd scenes. A screen above the The ingenious piece, which plays with and pays stage supplies the English supertitles, and two large tribute to the conventions of Italian opera, is based on screens on either side of the stage carry live video of the the "apocryphal but true" secret diaries of Chicken puppet performance. PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 11

Ir A Lel/£ * re«/L begins with the inci- but these affairs do not last. Through it all, what sus- dent that first made La Pulcina Piccola famous. When tains her and charms the audience is her unfailing opti- an acorn lands on her head, she believes that the sky is mism. She accepts the good and the bad with equal falling and decides to warn the king of this calamity. aplomb, always remembering that "my luck in life and Several feathered friends accompany her, but only La my luck in love wax and wane like the moon above." Pulcina survives the journey and reaches the king. She When the audience first meets La Pulcina, she learns that she is mistaken, of course, but life in the barn- makes a spectacular entrance worthy of such a heroine, yard does not hold the same appeal after such excite- emerging fully-formed, like Venus, from the sea foam ment. And so, she embarks on a search for love and on a scallop shell. Love's Fowl did not come into being adventure that includes triumphant forays into politics, quite so easily, growing from a seven minute lark into academia, and even the theater, where she is celebrated an elaborate hour-long production over the course of for her portrayal of Shakespeare's villainous Richard III. eighteen years. After realizing that this was more than a She travels to Egypt, where she naturally makes a ma- charming birthday present, Vitucci wrote the text for jor archaeological discovery, and she shares her experi- the show in English and set it to music by Ken Beltrone, ences with adoring crowds on a lecture tour of the United whose obsession with chickens had suggested the idea States. in the first place. This first version of Chicken Little's La Pulcina encounters tragedy as well. repeatedly story was designed for video, with 4 inch tall puppets finding herself in "a fine stew for a tender chicken." An that appeared to be life scale within the proscenium arch early affair with a brawny cock fighter in the big city ofa 19-inch color television. It was conceived as a spoof ends badly. Her true love, Cock Robin, is murdered by of the high-toned fictionalized biographies seen on pub- a jealous sparrow, and she nearly perishes herself when lic television, although this miniature Masterpiece The- her boat sinks in a storm on the South Seas. She finds atre included an elaborate disco number. It required nine solace in the arms of the pirate king who rescues her, people to perform and was staged by and for their friends and later with a cowboy in the American Southwest, as a sort of parlor entertainment. 9661

9&08

'ololld

Susan J . Vitucci and Henry Krieger performing their multi-media puppet opera, Love's Fowl. 12 P UPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

Although it was great fun, the piece had become The resulting work is a pastiche of styles and refer- too complicated to perform easily, so Vitucci set Chicken ences, making it accessible both to opera buffs and those Little aside for the time being. She continued to work unfamiliar with the genre. In addition to the rousing cho- with Beltrone on several other musical theater pieces. ruses, searing laments and rapturous love duets typical These were designed for people rather than puppets, of traditional Italian opera, there is a scene between La though they experimented with mask work and the styl- Pulcina, the Pirate King (whose name is, of course, ized use of objects. Then Vitucci decided to learn Italian Chicken of the Sea) and his band of roustabouts that is and took an intensive language course that culminated in eerily reminiscent of the famous "1 am a Pirate King" a ten minute presentation . Presenting a book report or number from Gilbert & Sullivan ' s The Pirates of telling the story of her life did not appeal to her, so Vitucci Penzance. The castis introduced with an elaborate scene pulled out her clothespin puppets. rechristened Chicken that calls to mind Busby Berkeley and the Ziegfield Fol- Little as La Pulcina Piccola, and performed the story for lies, with tiers of clothespin kicklines, a bevy of wooden her class on top of a cardboard box draped with black chorines descending a grand staircase, and a crane shot cloth. Because her Italian was still limited, she kept the achieved by gluing clothespins to a turntable. Sight gags dialogue simple and used sight gags to convey much of and sly cultural references are sprinkled throughout the the plot. piece in the spirit of the old Warner Brothers cartoons According to Vitucci, this translation "revealed Ital - that parodied operas like Wagner's Ring cycle . ian to be the true language of La Pulcina's heart." The While the piece is frequently funny, Vitucci and piece had not yet become an opera- the words were now Krieger perform their roles with complete seriousness. spoken, not sung-but, suddenly, it demanded to be taken Vitucci describes both opera and puppetry as highly styl- seriously. Vitucci believes that the use of Italian "gives ized forms that can convey heightened reality, but only us the distance we need to open our hearts and go into i f the performer stays committed to the truth of the char- this world." Perhaps it plays upon the audience's notion acter: "If 1 laugh, the audience stops trusting the world of what constitutes "high culture" or conjures romantic that l've created." For her, the most important aspect of notions of the old country, or maybe we just assume that the piece is its tight narrative structure, which allows La what we cannot understand must be profound. Whatever Pulcina to lead an enviably full life in just over an hour. the reason. the language makes it difficult to dismiss the She sites Teatro Hugo & Ines as puppeteers she particu- work as merely cute and dispels any preconceptions that larly admires because "with virtually nothing, they cre- a piece using puppets to recount a fairy tale must be solely ate little silent movies with a beginning, a middle, and for children. an end, and they don't go any longer than is necessary to After this epiphany, Vitucci performed Love's Fowl tell the story." asa salon piece at parties and small spaces around the Vitucci and Krieger have performed Love's Fowl city. In preparation for the 1992 Edinburgh Fringe Festi- at venues including the West Bank, the Ensemble Studio val, she staged a preview perfor- Theatre, Los Kabayitos Puppet Theatre (as part of the mance at the West Bank Cafe. Toy Theater Festival),and P.S. 122 (aspartofthe Henson Henry Krieger was in the audience, «.---a Festival's Late Night Cabaret). In 1998, New York The- and he was so moved that he offered 0.~ atre Workshop presented an extended run of Love 's Fowl. to compose music for the piece. A Both adults and children responded to the show, return- collaboration by fax and answering ..1 ing repeatedly with friends and family, and critics ap- machine ensued, and at long last, La <· " ~'~ _ plauded it as well. The New York Times praised its "canny Pulcina found her true voice and clever libretto" and "sprightly music," calling the through song. Vitucci says that the piece "wacky and wise, melodie and mischievous." Pro- use of the music further broadened the possibilities of ducer Bruce Yeko saw the show, which led to the record- the piece: "lt made it possible for me to say things quickly ing of a cast album on Original Cast Records. La Pulcina and efficiently, and relay something in the character's heart also reached audiences across the country through the that can't be said any other way." With the addition of popular National Public Radio show This American Life, supertitles and video projection , Love 's Fowl became a which featured Love's Fowl in a segment called "Chicken full-fledged puppet opera. Diva" that has aired repeatedly. PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 13

In fact. La Pulcina's following has grown to such an Although opportunities to see La Pulcina live on extent that she has her own international adoration soci- stage have been rare in recent years, Love's Fowl was pre- ety. Gli Ammiratori della Pulcinina. Fans donate money sented last July at the Stonington Opera House in Maine. to the cause. subscribe to Clotheslines, the semi-annual Vitucci is currently working to find a venue in New York newsletter, and visit her web site to get the latest news City where it can be staged several times a week, in addi- and read excerpts from her diaries, which detail episodes tion to collaborating with Krieger on a new puppet the- between the adventures related in Love's /row/. Vitucci ater piece. In spite of the challenges she may face. La also receives repeated requests for merchandise bearing Pulcina Piccola is no tragic heroine like Medea or Tosca. La Pulcina's likeness. The first item in La Pulcina's sig- She has more in common with Odysseus, embarking on, nature line, a refrigerator magnet, is distributed to fan in the words of Susan Vitucci, "ajourney where the forces club members. Vitucci plans additional items for the line, of the universe and the forces of the gods intervene, and which will soon be available through the web site you have to deal with it." Wherever her travels take this www.pulcina.org. What is most striking about all of this plucky heroine, her fans will be waiting. is the fact that many of her admirers have never even seen the show. They have fallen in love with La Pulcina sight unseen. whichisatestamenttothepower of Vitucci's Meg Daniel is on our board of advisors. She works for creation . " an indomitable character who comes tolife with the Jim Henson Foundation. an open heart."

from the libretto- C 7

Jo/Zo u/Za ~aAna (11, 5/4,1,#w LPiceeL :nicu.Bay fwm t,~, *cajG,en Z~]~||~ on a >cuffop meff.) X7% Ya t]Plt(cina glcco:a =3ono 53wyuz h.dictmt' con 96,ttif~gg~2 ~ ~ CHICKEN LITTLE Ct)}ZOZE. anch le tl hatil:na , I am a young chick r r t or Effinto cuor E coli~Tlyt'LE inilgint daLL amurs trnE,zo . 'e: 35 and ready for love. Z C (O}n : i UOUU dou i iono izatct . nci y £unyEZE,no alf anzOTE a~Ozo . My heart is as fragile as the egg from which I was born. I. ./ .' g- / Treat me gently ' <*n 0:-'* ~~~C and so will I treat you. ~ 7 9 / r .49 . # 1 together from earthly love we will reach for the divine.

Tojoin the fan club and receive a subscription to the newsletter, send an email to: [email protected] or write to C/othes/ines, 250 West 85th Street #15G, New York, NY 10024 14 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL HAYDN and the Prince Esterhazy Marionettes

' L

by Stephen Carter

Although the operatic works of many composers have been adapted to the marionette stage, few can be said to have been specifically composed for puppets. The prolific Franz Joseph Haydn 11732- 1809] was for thirty years in the exclusive employment of a princely estate with an active and elaborate marionette theater. The story of his marionette operas emerges only slowly, for they appear and vanish throughout history as mysteriously as the composer's own head, which disappeared from his grave for over a hundred years. Let us pursue these mysteries further-.

Readers will be familiar with the Viennese Court from the film Amadeus. King Joseph Il , who complains of "too many notes," is the son of the Empress Maria Theresa. This was the Habsburg Dynasty that in the eighteenth century controlled Hungary through subservient members of the Magyar nobility, of which the Esterhazys became one of the most dominant and affluent families. Haydn was employed by several generations of Esterhazy Princes, beginning his role as Kapellmeister at the Eisenstadt Palace, and relocating after 1768 to the summer palace at Esterhaza under the patronage o f Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy. Nicolaus was the most ambitious and cultured of his patroni sparing no expense in an effort to rival the splendors of the French court at Versailles. After years of neglect and decay. the still standing palace and grounds are now being restored and can be visited near the town of Fertod, Hungary.

The palace opened at the rear onto an enormous formal garden with avenues, fountains, a "Chi-- nese" Pavilion, orangerie, the music hall where Haydn and his orchestra lived, an opera house and, facing it across the French garden, the marionette theater. The exterior of the marionette theater was said to be identical to that of the opera house, which had a footprint of sixty by two hundred feet. An anonymous report dated 1784 offers an authentic description of the interior which is quoted in translation by authors including Henryk Jurkowski: 18th century marionettes, housed in Casa Goldoni P U PPETRY INTERNATIONAL 15

more exhaustive research, we must turn to the musicolo- The Marionette Theatre is situated ris-ti-vis from the Opera gists. Hungarian researcher, Matyas Horanyi provides a thor- Esterhaza Estate and its personnel, ar- House. and is quite large but without boxes and gallery. The ough account of the chitecture. and festivities. A closer examination of the mari- whole pit looks like a grotto. in that all the walls. niches. and onette theater, its operators, and repertoire is the essay by stones, and snails, and when opening are covered with steps, H .C . Robbins Landon in the 1962 Haydn Yearbook, aschol- it is lighted. it presents a very curious and striking appear- arly periodical. HCRL, as I shall refer to him, is a treasure ance. The theatre itself (i.e. the stage) is rather large and the trove of information, being the leading world Haydn scholar. puppets are very well made and the costumes magnificent. - and indeed the champion for the authenticity of the only Not only farces and comedies are played. but also opem seria. existing score of Haydn's marionette opera, The Burning House. The marionette music was largely believed to have as for example when the late Maria Theresa graciously ap- been lost, except for a few fragments, until 1935, when a plauded the opera A/ceve and admired the instantaneous and Parisian antique bookseller, Arthur Rau offered at auction. imperceptible changex of scene. They have also performed from the library of a French countryhouse, the scores for the Siege of Gibralmr with much ability and military array. Philenion und Baucis. and Die Feuersbrunst. The first was -A theater which is perhaps unique in its kind. The perlor- purchased by the Paris Library of the Conservatory, and the mances in this theatre and in the Opera House may be en- second by Yale University Library. joyed free of charge by everyone. Haydn's Marionette Opera A painting of the Opera House proscenium and orchestra Repertoire pit remains. but no depictions of the marionette theater have While the building still stands today, years of subse- survived. HCRL painstakingly examines the existing libretti. scores. use as an armory and later storage for fodder or fire- quent . and other archival material. He then lays out a plausible list have obliterated any clues as to the formal and size of wood of Haydn's marionette operas which I summarize and anno- the mai-ionette stage. Puppetry histories tend to offer a list of tate as follows: three or tour Haydn marionette opera titles , often Der Gotterrath (Council of the Gods ), 1773- companion with a degree of confusion piece to Philemon and Baticix in which the Greek gods glo- and contradiction. For rify the Empress Maria Theresa. The libretto exists, but only the first number from the music is extant.

Philemon und Bitticis. (Philemon and Baucis), 1773 & 1776 versions. Synopsis: Jupiter, en- raved by man's wicked- ness. creates a fierce thunderstorm. nearly de- stioying the villaee where the pious couple, Philemon and Baucis, reside. The couple pray 1 .9 . ,:69 "~ ,Yi' and are spared. Still test- ing the mortals. Jupiter and Mercury, disguised as travellers. seek shel- ter for the nieht. The generous old couple in- vite them to share their food and their home. 16 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

Philemon and Baucis, David Smith's Marionettes

was widely popular in European marionette repertoire. The falsely accused Genoveve is spurned by her husband Siegfried, who has been misled by the evil Golo. Wandering in the forest with her infant son she is miraculously protected by the Virgin Mary who induces a doe to give milk to the starving child. The epic was often divided into parts for dramati- zation. Haydn's part four likely featured the punishment of the evil Golo, the rec- onciliation of Siegfried and Genoveve. and concluded with her saintly death and ascension to heaven accompanied by an- gels. Parts one to three were also performed by the Esterhaza marionettes. but Haydn is thought to have composed only for the fourth installment

Didone Abbandonata ( Dido Abandoned). Mercury recalls that, one year ago, to that day, one of Jupiter's 1776, and revival 1778. Synopsis: Dido was a legendary prin- lightening bolts struck down the couple's only son, Aret and cess of Phoenicia who fled to Africa, where she founded the his bride, Narcissa. Philemon decides to serve the travellers a city of Carthage. Virgil in the Aeneid adapted her story fur- special goose they had planned to sacrifice to Jupiter. Jupiter then having her make love to Aeneus in a cave, but later be is delighted and touched by the goodness of the old people. abandoned. In her despair, she commits suicide. Music and He spares the village and returns the young couple, Aret and libretto presumed lost. Narcissa, to life. Jupiter transforms the humble home of the old couple into a golden temple, and Philemon and Baucis Die Feuersbrunst, also known as Das Abgebrannte Haus become priest and priestess of the temple dedicated to Jupiter. (The Burning House), 1776 or '77- probably based on a Historic libretto and music exist in two versions. Modern pub- popular stage play by the Berlin actor, Grossman. Synopsis: lished scores: Barenreiter-Verlag, Kassel, 1959 and Henle- Hanswurst, a chimneysweep, loves Columbina. Columbina Verlag, Munich. Recordings: A 1951 Vienna performance was is infatuated by a visiting court dandy, Leander. Her father, issued by Vox. Marionettist, David Smith of Ontario conducted Odoardo, a greedy estate manager, is eager for acceptance and recorded a private archival tape. in high society, and encourages the liaison. Odoardo has recently foreclosed on debts owed by Steckel's deceased fa- Hexenschabbas (The Witch's Sabbath ), 1773- a familiar then taking possession of the family house . Steckel and theme for marionettes, but we have no details on Haydn's. An Hanswurst enter the cellar to search for a family jewel bur- Italian version, /l Consiglio delle Sireghe is cited by Michael ied in the cellar and, startled by a cat, set the house on fire. Byrom from the seventeenth century marionette opera reper- Columbina is despondent by the loss of all her pretty dresses toire of Filippo Acciaiuoli. In Italian versions, Pulcinella sees in the fire, but Hanswurst successfully wins her love through a hunchback miraculously relieved of his hump by a circle of a scries of improbable disguises and, in the process, restores dancing witches who are chanting the words "Sunday and Steckel's fortune, and sends the dandy packing. Complete Monday." Pulcinella tries his luck but adds "Tuesday, Wednes- manuscript music score at Yale Library. No libretto extant. day." He suffers additional humps or is transformed into agoat Modern published scores: Schott & Co., London, 1961. a in consequence. Music and libretto presumed lost. piano reduction score, with reconstructed dialogue added by HCRL. Henle-Verlag, Munich 199(}, full orchestrations, Genovevens Vierter Theil (Genoveva Part Four), 1777 . No li- no connecting dialogue . Recordings : Library of Congress has bretto or scores of Haydn's version remain, however subject one aria on an old LP with a selection of German theatrical PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 17

music. Carter Family Marionettes (with improvised connecting dialogue) made an archival recording, Seattle, May, 2002. ..» %

Die Bestrafte Rachbegierde. ( Vengeance Achieved ), 1779- sometimes referred to as Vendetta, or Die Bestrafte Rachgier, instead. This work exists only as libretto with no music extant. Only known copy is owned by University of California at Berkeley. The work has been inexplicably coniounded by -18" scholars, and by Haydn himself, with The Burning House sometimes given as an alternate title. The libretto clearly represents a completely different storyline, featuring the characters of the King of Utopia, an evil fairy. also includ- Hanswurst. It concludes in a glade with fireworks, and is presumably of the "fairy-opera" genre. l would love to get 141** I 4 it translated.

Der Krumme Teufel, (The Lame Devil ), early 17508, in Vienna. This work was composed in Haydn's youth before IN , I '- 7 '4 he went to work for Esterhazy. It may have been more along '*4« , "AS, »S«- the lines of incidental music, rather than a complete opera. ..r Commissioned by the showman Francesco Bernardone at Kiirntner Ton Vienna. Only fragments of the music are extant. The story is drawn from a novel by Alain-Rend LeSage AMERICAN PUPPPETRY PREMIERE OF (1668-1747)in which a necromancer makes a pact with an impish devil, and embarks on a grand tour. LeSage also com- THE BURNING HOUSE piled the TI*atre de la Foire, transcriptions of marionette- opera parodies played in the Parisian Fairs using popular Boston, 1984 melodies known as vaudevilles. The Boston Premiere Ensemble, led by John Opera and Singspiel Opera was essentially an Italian artform Adams, claims the honor of having been the from the 17thandintothe 18th centuries. Among the aristo- first to perform this Haydn Opera in America crats. French was the language of courtesy and manners, Ital- ian the language of music, and German or other languages with puppets. employed for talking to the common people. Of Haydn's operas, practically all are in Italian, except for the marionette Though the figures in question were hand and operas, which are a mixture of High German and Viennese rod puppets, they were quite striking, and were dialect . Opera Seria. the baroque Italian Opera, usually based designed and built by Caleb Fullam and Karen on mythological themes, consisted of arias and duets con- Larsen. They also performed the figures, with nected by recitativo, stylized half-sung speech over a sparse the help of Windle Davis and Irene Hartford. underlying rhythm on harpsichord or bass vioL known as the continuo. The single performance was in Harvard Square, in Sanders Theater. Despite the partici- The success of John Gay's Beggars Opera (1 728) in pation of such well-known singers as Robert London using popular melodies and English language be- Honeysucker and Susan Larsen, the premiere gan to shake things up in the opera world. Soon after, the was poorly attended. For those who did attend, Austrians were developing a form of comic, German lan- though, it is fondly remembered. [Ed.] guage operetta known as Singspiel in which popular accessible melodies were interspersed with improvised vernacu- lar dialoeue. 18 P UPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

Columbina and Hanswurst from Die Feuersbrunst, w Carter Family Marionettes

Woodcut of Josef Martin Menninger as "Hans Wurst" 1 'j,¥7, The Puppets i & the Players

~ Receipts and documents 14 in the Esterhazy Ar- ~/ .» chives have surfaced which show that the mari- I # onette theater was sold to /4 "/ L „ Prince Nicolaus on July 23, 1772 by Joseph Karl von Pauersbach for the sum of l.270 gulden. This probably represented a generic Traditions of theatrical comedy were also -» cast of carved wooden fig- heavily Italian ate. Arlecchino and his zanni col- ures and some elements of leagues swept the world stages from Rome to staging, possibly a prosce- Copenhagen. Around 1720, Josef Anton -- ""*4* nium, and d6cor. It appears Stranitzky, a puppeteer and comic actor, adapted the dress of~ that~ ~~4~6<~~-c16*C~-~ he brought this equipment with Viennese peasantry and the character of Hanswurst was born. him from Vienna where he had previously produced the A lowbrow comic. Hanswurst was deplored by one writer as marionette opera Alceste . Nothing of theni remains. Our best "a national disgrace." Even Max von Boehn echoes this sen- guess is that they resembled other 1 8th century marionette timent in his 1929 history, Puppets and Automata, saying. casts designed for the pleasure of nobility, such as the set in Venice, now housed in Casa Goldoni. Hanswurst is a dull wag who thinks he is witty when he wallows in the mud of vulgarities and double meanings." Pauersbach seems to have been the prime mover of the mari- the period The people. of course, loved every bit of it. Hanswurst may onette activities, and he is listed as director during of its greatest activity from 1776-78. Most of the presenta- have been obliged to exercise more propriety at Esterhaza. tions by the marionettes were adaptations by Pauersbach trans- Prince Esterhazy ordered an actor to be In one incident, lated from French or Italian into German. The occasion upon whipped for lifting the hem of an actress' skirt with the tip which the marionette theater was first used at the Palace of of his cane on stage. Nevertheless, Esterhazy's actors and Esterhaza was for the visit of the Empress Maria Theresa on puppeteers relied heavily on improvisational skill and wit . September 2 , 1773 when she viewed Philemon and Baucis, They were obliged to provide constant and varied enter- and Der Gotterath. followed by spectacular fireworks in the garden. On this occasion it is also noted that Haydn conducted tainment on a daily basis. The scores that remain from the a separate concert with the orchestra clad in Chinese gala period notate only the cue lines for the orchestra, the actors uniform, while the palace was lit by twenty thousand Chi- weie expected to invent and vary the dialogue ex tempore. nese lanterns! The singing was done from the wings by the opera singers, while actor/puppeteers did the connecting spoken dialogue. A fifteen to twenty member theatrical troupe, under the As HCRL snipes, "opera singers acted no better then than direction of actor Carl Wahr, was in the employ of Esterhazy, they do now. as was the French mime, Bienfalt. The Bienfait family was PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 19

The Necromancer's atelier, from Der Krumme Tuefel '* /.- ELY '. 1,% V 1.f:; /1 by the author's company- the VE

, Carter Family Marionettes- in H Seattle, May 2001. Phi/emoit und Baucishas been staged by for several generations pre- f YO g/ ":im./A vious one of the most famous ,i, rl*pah . 4141~9*k'k. Nick Coppola's Marionettes in of marionette troupes active '' ;«5~54 z New York in the 197(}s, andby in the Parisian Fairs. Mistress 'f -*-4- 1 4 Wid@r.*1*121/.illl1mst,t .-s._~in#v David Smith's Marionettes in o f the wardrobe,<. Frau Anna s -,+44 ' it, Ontario Canada. in 1987. Handlin made costumes and These are the productions 1 am additional puppets as needed. ~*'; - fff/lm'i'*/i,-4& fi~ng.44*BLy'P w, aware oE but surely there have Italian scenic artist, Pietro : 6 been others . Travaglia was responsible for 4 ~ ...c- :.·~11; \1 1, 9 the ddcor and liehting of the 4 - ... · ' ---f- -,- -- r f' And what about Haydn's head. marionette theater, as well as .,A;6%6 S» - » ., --» - I - i:k *- --. you ask'? the Opera House. He was a - disciple of the Brothers Galliari who are credited with free- In 18(}9 when Haydn died in Vienna. an acquaintance of his- ing theatrical design from stiff baroque convention, intro- Mr. Rosenbaum crept into his grave during the night and ducing a new and sweeping romantic spirit. The court li- removed his head. Rosenbaum's wife had been a singer in the brarian, Philipp Georg Bader made contributions to cira- Esterhazy opera company. They kept the skull in a glass case maturgy and direction. When "extras" were needed, they in their home. Years later, Prince Esterhazy wished to move were drafted from the palace grenadiers, which was conve- Haydn's body back to the palace in Esterhaza, and discov- nient as many productions involved the use of gunpowder. ered the theft. Secret service were dispatched to the Only a few marionette productions were mounted after the Rosenbaum home. but Mrs. Rosenbaum hid the skull under departure of Pauersbach from the court. One of the last in her night gown. The skull circulated as a novelty among 1783 was the Siege c,f Gibraltar which required extensive Viennese salons until 1954, when it was reunited with the rehearsal and consumed a great deal of gunpowder. rest of Haydn's remains.

Haydn's orchestra consisted of fifteen to twenty play- FINO ers. A complete ensemble of singers was also under his direction. His sound management of the musical household earned him the title of "Papa Haydn." He once composed an amusing symphony in which the players leave. one by one. until only a single violin is left. This was a hint to the Prince that his overworked staff desired a vacation.in 1799 1 /1 / / 4//1 ) Z/)1)1,/ I the already pensioned-off scenic artist. Travaglia was "1 1. E 01(,E charged with packing up and shipping off all remnants of 11\ 1 £&) 11 "#\\AT the puppets and staging to Countess Klutsewsky (or ~#====Ck» Klutscheszky) who had purchased the lot for 1()()0 gulden. .t ':" '.'. '' I .''IC ) 43 .. That is the last that is known of them . 0 41 Revivals since have necessarily been limited, only two », V.--I..£ scores being available after 196(), and none prior to that. '., ·'-=/~/U&&Tf Die Fettersbrunsthas been staged by Puppenteater der Stadt Halle, which may be the same as an October, 2001 produc- 3:r'. tion for a Vienna Festival, directed by Brian Michaels. by an unnamed Boston group I see sidebar p. 171 with T/*111.' \ 00 handpuppets in the 198()s according to Karen Larsen. and I. 20 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

Bibliography Websites Of interest The Hardn Yearbook, Vol. I / Band I , 1962 Theodore www.teatrinodelles . com/museo/marionette . shtml Presser Co. Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania pp. 111-200, photo of devil from Bernardone's trolipe included in Haydn's Marionette Operas and the Repertoire of the their on-line museum. Marionette Theatre at Esterhaz Castle, by H.C. Robbins www.sopron.hu/FERTOD/fert01.jpg Landon. photos of the Esterhaza Palace and Haydn's living quarters. The Magnificence of Esterhaza. by Matyas Horanyi Barrie and Rockliff, 1962. Stephen Carter is the Artistic Director of the Northwest Histoire des Marionettes en Europe by Charles Magnin Puppet Center in Seattle Washington. He and his wife Chris Originally pub. 1862, Paris Reissued 1983, Arnaldo Forni are well-known in puppetry circles as the founders of the Editore. Carter Family Marionettes. A History Of European Puppetry, Vol. One by Henryk Jurkowski, 1996 Edwin Mellen Press Ltd. For description of "Witches Sabbath," Punch in the IMA ian Puppet Theater, by Michael Byrom Centaur Press, 1983, London. For description of Genoveva, see Popular Puppet the- aterin Europe, /800-/9/4, by John McCormick& Bennie 4 Pratasik Cambridge University Press, 1998. Thanks to David Smith of Ontario for description of Philemon and Baucis.

Cast from the Carter Family Marionettes' production of Die Feuersbrunst Draaon Dance Theatre Exploring the visual and performing arts since 1974 The leading supplier of Puppet Books to Puppeteers and Puppet Centers Worldwide Halloween show, October, at the full /#1]A moon. Help us Puppet Books it! prepare from Ray DaSilva

Fall artist week- 63 Kennedy Road, Bicester 41 ends in Montreal Oxfordshire OX26 2BE U.K. and winter work- /2 ,.„ shops, residencies An extensive puppet archive of books on puppets, marionettes. and performances shadow puppets mid model theatre and puppet theatre design and 7,:,1~„. in Oaxaca Mexico, animation in :,11 its forms. Ray stocks the most varied and of puppet books fur sale, both new and used. March-May, 2003. extensive collection

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Phone: 44 (0)1869 245 793 Call for details. 802-223-4051 Fax: 44 (0)1869 245 793 or write Euridice y los Titires de Caronte Opera for mezzo-soprano, baritone and puppeteer, premiered at the Summer Festival of Barcelona July, 2001

The story is very simple: Sofia, a respected opera singer, faces a termi- nal illness. Oscar, who is both her good friend and the director of the orchestra. wants to distance her from this horribly dramatic reality. by getting her to concentrate all her efforts on En ridke,. the opera by Peri they are rehearsing which should launch them into international fame. But the appearance of Polchinela and of a mysterious little puppet theatre on the street, with its traditional and histrionic roles- full of energy and passion for life- captivates Spfia. They represent the magic. unconscious projection of the singer's inner voice her desire for life and her confrontation with the reality of her own death. Oscar, seeing Sofia fully enter into the unreal and absurd world of the puppets. remains trapped by his jealousy, thus setting up a rather classic "love triangle."

-Librem, by Toiii Rumbilit and music by Jocm Albert Amargi,s.

This description of the opera is adapted from an essay by Toni Rumbau.

Main, thanks to Beckie Kravet: for securing photos and information. 22 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

One side-effect of living on an archipelago like New York City is that you learn a lot about bridges. On the eastern shore of the East River, in a neighborhood called Dumba is a small tight cluster of blocky old factory buildings and Bridge of Wings warehouses where Chinese Theatre Works and Great Small Works share a studio/rehearsal space. The landscape is de- by Stephen Kaplin and Kuang-Yu Fong fined by the two titanic suspension bridges- the Manhattan and the Brooklyn- that loom above its rooftops. The word "bridge" is an exceptionally rich one in the English language. It is a card game, an object used in billiards, a musical convention, a dental device and an electrical apparatus. A bridge can be a part of a ship, a railroad engine or an industrial furnace. As a verb. "to bridge" refers to an artificial connection across an im- pediment or obstacle. It has been a favorite pastime for human beings since the dawn of time. Something in our bones responds to the challenge of a blocked path or a body of water and makes us want desperately to find a way to the other side. Since we are not graced with wings as birds are, we've been forced to invent a wide array of artificial objects and techniques to help us across. My wife and performing partner, Kuang- Yu Fong, and 1 have chosen puppet theater as our "bridge," using it as a medium to translate and interpret classical forms of Chinese opera performance for American audiences. We arrived at this solution, in part, to find a common ground for our very different artistic back- grounds- Kuang-Yu's training is in traditional Chinese Opera, while mine is in contemporary puppetry technique (we met performing together in a Bread and Puppet Christmas Nativ- ity Play at Judson Church in 1984). Our col- laborations together, first as Chinese Theatre Workshop and later as Chinese Theatre Works, began in 1994 and continue to the present. In this short essay, we wish to present some re- flections on our experiences of blending Chi- nese Opera performance with contemporary puppetry. This melding of performance genres is not such a stretch as it may initially seem. It is not nearly the formidable barrier that cultural and linguistic differences can be. The traditional forms of Chi- nese puppet theater, including string, hand, rod and shadow genres, are closely modeled on the classical Kun and Beijing Opera performances. They share literary sources, visual PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 23 styles, iconic languages for face painting and costuming, so staging techniques have been preserved unchanged for so many centuries. Imagine if we in the West :my tz.Int'Isi:CrjytYIC,731'gnT:t rml°YUY ~* had preserved not just the texts of Shakespeare's Puppet performances even mimic the live stage's tour-de- plays, but the choreography, blocking, costuming, force acrobatics and martial arts displays. So an understand- makeup and singing styles,- and musical accom- ing of the basics of the Chinese opera forms are important to paniments as well. this discussion. The origins of modern Peking Opera can be All traditional genres of Chinese opera combine text, ~ traced back to an exact date- the eightieth birth- music, dance, pantomime, martial arts and acrobatics into a day of the Emperor Chin Long in the late 18th cen- unity. It is a kind of synergy not often seen on Western stages, tury. On that historic occasion, the greatest local where the primary focus is on the playscript, or the director's / opera companies from all over the empire were concept. In contrast, Chinese Opera is predominantly a , /,A invited to the capital to give performances. Among performer's art. In metaphorical terms, western theatrical per- 4 7 these companies were four of the most popular formance can be likened to an orchestra concert: each per- troupes from the Anhui province. After the birth- former follows their own portion of the score under the arch, ,~ day celebrations were over, they decided to stay in directorial gaze of the all-seeing conductor/director/auteur. 1,4 Peking. They absorbed the best of what they saw The audience focus is on the presentation of the musical text, DV of other troupes' performances, and incorporated the composition. They are there to hear Beethoven or John it into their own style, presenting it in the local Cage, not necessarily to see a particular soloist. ln contrast ~ Peking dialect. It was a much more flamboyant to this, a Chinese Opera is structured more like a jazz con- and flashy performance style, driven by a quicker cert- not in the sense that the artists improvise, but in that tempo and a more percussive musical sound. The the audience goes to enjoy the individual performers and cumbersome literary language and meandering compare their techniques for rigorously presenting the stan- ~ arias were stripped away to make room for excit- dard repertoire. They will respond directly to the star-turns ing dance and fiery martial arts displays. This new of their favorites, shouting "Good! Good!" at their appear- style of performance caught on quickly at the im- ance and during pauses. They do not necessarily go to see perial court, and with official sanction, the Peking thi s or that particular play. Opera style soon became widely popular on the Chinese Opera performers train rigorously from their streets of the city as well. Gradually, its intluence youth in academies under the strict discipline of masters to spread across the rest of China. specialize in just one type of character role. These roles fall Today, nearly every province has its own 10- into four main character types: "Shen" male roles, "Dan" cal Peking Opera troupes, in addition to compa- female roles, "Chin" painted face characters, and "Chou" nies specializing in regional styles. The Chinese clowns. These are further subdivided: young or old male lead Opera Academy in Beijing takes in the best young rolesi refined or coquettish female roles; and both sexes have actors from across the country and gives them top profes- martial arts roles that specialize in spectacular stage combat sional level training. But even as academies turn out hun- choreographies. It is possible for men to portray female roles dreds of professional artists, the popularity of the traditional (this is what the great Mei Lan Fang's specialty was) or for Chinese opera has been in sharp decline over the last few women to play young male roles. No matter which role the decades. Many trained artists among the younger generation actor performs, the elaborate costumes and stylized facial have found that it is easier to leave China and settle in the makeup follow strict rules for each type of role and help to West. Through an oddity in US Immigration guidelines and identi fy the essential nature of each character, as do specific codes (because they do not threaten the jobs of Western Op- movement and vocal patterns. era artists), many of these artists have recently landed on our With roots in the Ming Dynasty (15th-17th century), shores. As a result, New York City now has dozens of Chi- Kun Opera is the oldest Chinese opera form still extant. The nese opera companies, at alllevels of artistic proficiency. musical orchestration is different from the younger and more Yet even with an influx of artists, the Chinese opera's popular northern or Peking Opera- the lead instrument is inftuence in the West has been oblique and spotty. Bertolt the reed flute, the tempo slower and the melodies richer . Brecht's fascination with Chinese acting techniques came af- The dramatic texts are of the highest literary quality. Written ter seeing the great interpreter of female "Dan" roles, Mei by and for members of the scholarly upper classes, the plays Lan Fang at a theater symposium in Moscow in the 1930s. are full of poetic metaphor, complex wordplay and allusions It's not even clear if he saw an entire performance, yet the to the classical canon. They were often exceedingly long. experience of watching Fang was enough to provoke Brecht Kun opera is extraordinary in that the choreography and the into using Chinese Opera as a model for an alternative to the 24 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

"realistic" acting techniques that were (and still are) preva- lent in the West. He devised his theory of "alienated"acting based on what he perceived of Fang's technique- that 1.9~' the actor fully acknowledge the artificiality of his stage presence and exploit that awareness as a tool for shaping the 17 audience's response to the performance. Puppet theatre in its contemporary forms, where the manipulator is in full view of the audience (or at least an acknowledged presence) has a great deal in common with 0 4 this Brechtian concept of "alienated" acting. The separa- 5,%4*4# . ' tion between the puppeteer and the puppet parallels the psy- chic detachment of the live actor from his or her role. It is ..: . .It" but one step beyond the highly stylized graphic face paint- V.r 111Zit]Ct'deESat~~r~']YFer~h~ao~~~~ui~ier - 4 / bodies. The separation of the puppet figure from the manipulator gives a flexibility of form and scale which live human-based performance generally lacks. making it possible to dramatically multiply the number of figures on stage, and to include non-human-styled creatures- animals, spirits and deities. In our productions, we try to balance traditional Chi- nese and contemporary Western aesthetics. It is not always an easy trick. In the traditional Chinese theatre, there is no need to transmit plot details, because everybody knows them '1=~ already- and they don't expect to see an entire story any- ~/ 4 high points of all Chinese dramatic literature. Re- way. But playing for predominantly English speaking au- cently this gem was performed in its entirety by diences who don't have the same cultural background. we ., Lincoln Center. the first time in over 4()() years must present an entire story, complete with footnotes and 4// that a complete performance had been produced. explanations. We use the English texts and dialogue to 1 U CTW's truncated version of this bridge between musical selections and arias in the original otherworldly romance clocked in at under an Mandarin, to present the main stem of the often convoluted t,f hour. We presented excerpts from the original kun storylines. While this makes for a fundamental change from opera's score of song, text, dance and music, al- tradition, it makes the theater more accessible to those out- ternating with English narrative sections per- side those traditions. , formed with the western styles of mask and pup- Our first attempt at this manner o f hybrid Chinese op- petry, particularly, toy theater. era was To.v Theatre Peony Pavilion. The original opera Although Penny Pavilion isa high point of was written by Tang Xien Zu in the Ming Dynasty, and is Chinese drama, it is not part of the traditional roughly contemporary with Shakespeare's plays. The com- puppetry repertoire. So we felt free to exploit plete work spans 55 acts (about 22 hours of performance other forms of puppetry. We chose model or "toy" ~irne;.~letrteclitthearlryy. ~th~a;a~lsD~s.i:heepitut;y tr']~e; o.~- ~-~~~ theater- an extremely popular style of entertainment in Europe and America during the 19th and den, and dreams of a young scholar, Liu Meng Mei, and early 2(}th centuries. We liked the fact that the falls in love with him. After waking, and with no chance of !,1 ~ toy theatre was an archaic form (like kun opera ever finding him again, she pines away and dies. But her itself) and that it had often been a medium for love carries on beyond the grave. As a ghost, she meets the presenting reductions of European opera or popu- Judge of Hell, and convinces him of the sincerity of her lar stage hits of the day. In addition, the small passion. He gives her a chance to come back to life and ~~~ table-top proscenium stage gave us a practical consummate their marriage, if within three years she can means for having just three performers handle convince her lover to find and dig up her grave. She returns all the dozens of characters and scenic changes. to earth as a wandering spirit and manages to do just this. It also gave usa technique of layering our per- The scenes of their eery courtship mark one of the great '- formance space to allow fur dramatic shifts in PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 25

focus of the piece to be on the actors' performance- not just on the traditional skills of singing, dance and pantomime, but also puppet and mask manipulation and swift cos- 0 tume changes. For our second production in r.. this hybrid performance style, we chose the legend of the Whitesnake. Unlike the highbrow literary pedi- gree of Peony Pavilion, Whitesnake has been a popular fixture in the puppet theater and live opera repertoires. It is easy to see why. The story fol- 7/ lows the adventures of the mythic "Bai Su Jen"- a snake spirit who « chooses to take on human form. She falls in love with and marries a young f{ scholar, but their idyllic life together is disrupted by fierce struggles with a Taoist Monk, who objects to the in- termarriage of animal spirits with hu- Kun/Shadow Whitesrlake mans. Whitesnake's vigorous defense of her love forms the core of the legend that is unique in Chinese litera- scale like cinematic far and close shots, breaking down the ture in presenting a woman who is at once a strong, enter- realistic illusion of space when the live actors appeared to- prising figure, a romantic lover, a powerful magician and a gether with the tiny cardboard figures. The designs for the fierce warrior. flat figures were based on paintings by one of Kuang-Yu's In creating Kun/Shadow Whitesnake, we had two start- teachers at the Chinese Cultural University in Taipei, Mr. Da ing points. The first was the kun opera score, from which we Xie Zhang, who was a master performer of the energetic borrowed excerpts from the best and most well- known arias- "painted-face" martial roles. He was also a brilliant brush and "Strolling Next to West Lake," "Borrowing the Umbrella," ink painter, who illustrated many books detailing costumes "Stealing the Heavenly Grass," "Gold Mountain Temple," and accessories for the Chinese opera. We took the two lead "Fighting in the Water." "By the Broken Bridge." Here, in- characters. Lady Du and her lover, the young scholar Liu stead of scaling down the orchestration as we did for Peony, Meng Mei directly from one of his books. At our request, he we decided to make digital recordings of a full opera en- provided additional designs for other characters. semble. All the arias were presented with full choreography Music was an extremely important element of this pro- and singing. in traditional costumes, makeup and head dress. duction. We had to reduce the hours and hours of original Our second starting point was a remarkable set of an- opera score tojust a few choice passages and arias. We chose tique leather shadow figures that were part of the Pauline three of the most famous arias in the play- "Stroll in the Gar- Benton Collection. Benton is a unique figure in American den," "Shock From the Dream," "Calling the Painting"- to puppetry. She fell in love with Chinese shadow theater dur- play almost fully. From other arias, such as "Romancing a ing some ofher travels there in the 1920s and 30s. She bought Ghost," we only performed small excerpts. We also had to some of the fine old figures that were on sale in Peking and scale down the traditional orchestra of about a dozen instru- delved into their study with a local shadow master, Mr. Tuo mentalists to only three musicians. Our musical director, Cheng Li. From Li, Benton learned the repertoire and tech- Baogang Liu accomplished thi. task admirably. The small niques of making and manipulating the smallleather figures. ensemble was scored for reed and transverse flutes, sheng She had sets of figures made for her by traditional craftsman (mouth organ), percussion and keyboard synthesizer. In our in the local Luanchau style, only larger (14"-18"). Returning second production, we eliminated the synthesizer and added to America, Benton founded the Red Gate Players and per- another tlutist/wind player (who also played the musical saw). formed English language programs of the traditional Chi- Through all these complexities of production, we wanted the nese shadow theater for over three decades. One of her most 26 P UPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

popular programs was the Whitesnake legend. When her company disbanded in the 5()s, the entire collection of several hundred leather shadow figures, the musical instruments, all ~ - shadow screens and accessories were packed away into large steamer trunks and forgotten for forty years. Benton's performances had inspired a young woman

named Jo Humphrey to start her own theater devoted to the

- preservation of Chinese shadow puppet performance. This

company, the Yueh Lung Shadow Theatre Company, later for Traditional - F ' . I. expanded into the Gold Mountain Institute

. Shadow Theatre. It followed Benton's model in creating "au-

thentic" English language adaptations of traditional shadow -

. repertoire. After Benton's death, the trunks containing her treasures were inherited by GMI. When Humphrey opened them -

1 up she found that during the forty years in storage, the vis- cous tung oil, which was spread over the leather to condition * translucent, had extruded and gummed it and make it more CENTER FOR together the tightly packed figures into a solid block.

51 Humphrey spent years devoted to the arduous process of re- PUPPETRY storing the figures. She patiently pried them apart without shredding their delicate perforations, stripped off the tung oil ARTS and the gunk of time with solvents, resealed them with fresh oil or varnish, rejointed them and attached control rods. In 2001, GMI merged with our own company to form Chinese Theatre Works. Suddenly this wonderful collection of Chi- The Center for Puppetry Arts is a nese shadows was dumped in our laps and we felt it impera- magical place where adults as tive to find a way to use them in performance. That is how, well as children can be enter- after a forty-year slumber, Benton' s Whitesnake figures found tained, educated and enlight- their way onto the stage again. However, we found that bal-

2151*IEIZI ancing the puppet figures with the live performers was not so all forms of puppetry. ened about simple. The shadow screen was not as easy a frame to breach as Peony's toy theater stage. Somehow, despite the brilliance

131 Using the puppeteers and their work shadow figures, the live performers in their of the colorful as a catalyst, people can explore the equally brilliant costumes overwhelmed the poor two-dimen- &

puppetry universe through Museum sional images on the screen. There was no way for the actors exhibits, performances and educational to interact directly and pick up and handle the shadows, so it El We strive to enlighten the public activities. 1 was not as simple a matter to slip back and forth between the not only to the future of puppetry, but also two. We solved this problem by using an overhead projector

]-$ its global past. We also offer puppetry in as a light source for the shadow figures. which allowed us to partnership with agencies and organiza- project huge blow-up of the shadow images. While not a per- tions that are helping to change people's feet solution, it gave enough visual punch that the shadow lives for the better. figures could balance the live actor presence.

5151 One of the difficulties in trying to create hybrid perfor-

mances such as these is finding performers with both tradi- CENTER FOR PUPPETRY ARTS tional Chinese opera training and the capacity to work in 5 - 1404 Spring Street NW, Atlanta GA 30309 Western modes of acting and puppetry. Most Chinese actors, www.puppet.org however skilled and disciplined they may be within their own - form, have no experience in improvisation or playmaking. Nor do most western-trained actors have the skills and discipline for mastering the complex choreographies and vocal calisthenics of a Chinese opera score. We were most fortu- nate to have working with us several unique artists who were IFYOU'RE NOTYET A MEMBER OF UNIMA-USA, beat the newsstand price with a SUBSCRIPTION to: 27

- 1, nt that our work acknowledge of performance rooted in tra- ,ld. But in the field of folk-art Name: lers and presenters are always change, to keep faithful to the Address: :been passed down. A folk-art City, State: ,wn unchanged, though, is like Zip: o the wall of museum. Every ssic artform must evolve with Phone: ,en Mei Lan Fang created new Email: onded to the radical social . Our own modest productions 1 social environment in which UNIMA-USA, Inc. c/o Center for Puppetry Arts r 2%11' 4~9&~=1 1 and performed. It would have 1404 Spring Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30309-2820, USA ~ '~.4 or us to have made them were (404) 873-3089 ..k-''bi. nce of Peter Schumann's Bread -e or for the Spaghetti Dinners i TELEVISION j:;pi<* Festivals organized by Great .----fold---- 105; :479*2*ZZ: 4 MImagsuDScrIDelnsert 2/2002 old Chinese legend that best |~| the NEXT 2 ISSUES at the reduced price of $10* :ed for bridges. Two Starspirit Fl the NEXT 4 ISSUES (2 years) for $20* : Weavergirl and Altair, the t apart by gods by the Silver ISSUES at $7 each* [3 BACK ay. But on the nightof the Sev- 1995- #1 0 Festivals *ADD POSTAGE: in the U.S. $3/yr or $1.50/issue :venth Month, a living bridge 1996- #2 0 Personal Mythologies outside, add $4. per issue iss the gulf of stars and allows 1997- #3 0 100 years of Ubu, etc. ,ne night. 1998- #4 0 Puppetry, New and Old )0, is a bridge of wings, con- 1999- #5 0 Shadows, Obraztsov and more ow of those two great suspen- een New York (present) and FALL 1999- #6 0 Training the Puppet Artist SPRING 2000- #7 0 Traditional and Classical Puppetry FALL 2000- #8 0 Technology and Performance is an alumnus of the Puppetry SPRING 2001 - #9 0 Propaganda - Connecticut. He is a frequent FALL 2001 - # 10 0 Television Fnational . Kuang-Yu Fong is a 1 1 INFORMATION about UNIMA-USA SPRING 2002- #11 ~ Spirituality .'hinese Theatre Works. Enclose check made payable to UNIMA-USA, Inc. Sorry, no credit card orders accepted.

w w .un ima -usa.ora if/: f

At the same l time that we seek to build understanding OWL GLASS between ourselves as creators and our artists as collabora- -jl CENTER: is PUPPETRY tors. we also seek to foster change in our audience- which 43-4 made up predominantly of English speaking Westerners (al- ~,3' [email protected] though we also have a large Chinese following among middle- class families with children). Many of these kids have al- 47.*L'V~I ready begun to be assimilated into the Borg-cube of Ameri- -I , C=n *.S, *Pul E view can popular culture. Our productions give them a deep .ik : of Chinese culture, far removed from the glib Kung-Fu ste- reotypes on TV and Hollywood films. 319 No. Calhoun, West Liberty, IA 52776 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 27 able to make the perilous crossing between performance styles It is important that our work acknowledge seem effortless. Richard Cheng is a Malasian born, British and nurture forms of performance rooted in tra- trained actor who has a background in Shakespearean theater ~ ditions centuries old. But in the field of folk-art as well as modern dance and some classical dance training. performance, funders and presenters are always Although he had no training in Chinese Opera, the various telling you not to change, to keep faithful to the performance disciplines that he had studied intensively had forms as they have been passed down. A folk-art given him the means to study and learn Chinese opera chore- *~ tradition passed down unchanged, though, is like ography relatively easily. Mentoring him in Chinese opera a puppet pinned to the wall of museum. Every technique and teaching him the intricate choreographies and ~ ~ traditional and classic artform must evolve with arias was Yuhang Wen, a truly extraordinary young Kun op- time and place. Even Mei Lan Fang created new era master, who had performed the male lead role in Lincoln operas that responded to the radical social Center's unabridged Peony Pavilion. Wen later joined us as a changes of his day. Our own modest productions performer to play the male roles in both Toy Theatre Peony , 'f also respond to the social environment in which Pavilion and Kun/Shadow Whitesnake. Although a con- 4 they are conceived and performed. It would have summate performer in the Chinese idiom, he was next to hope- been impossible for us to have made them were less when we first handed him a puppet and a mask and asked %/ it notforthe intluence of Peter Schumann's Bread him to speak English text. But the discipline of his training ~~ and Puppet Theatre or for the Spaghetti Dinners gave him a tremendous edge in acquiring new skills. Within and Toy Theatre Festivals organized by Great a few months, he had become a competent puppeteer, and Small Works. had even managed to learn his script, syllable by syllable so ~ There is an old Chinese legend that best that he could present it with a natural, relaxed delivery. exemplifies the need for bridges. Two Starspirit The melding of ancient and modern, Asian and Western lovers, Vega, the Weavergirl and Altair, the theatrical forms has many pitfalls. There are the language Oxboy, were kept apart by gods by the Silver barriers, anxieties over needed INS documents, and other deep ~~ River, the Milkyway. But on the night of the Sev cultural rifts to navigate. And that's all before you even get to enth day of the Seventh Month, a living bridge the rehearsal hall. But the process of overcoming them is a of birds forms across the gulf of stars and allows valuable and necessary pilgrimage which we felt we must them to meet for one night. take as artists and as individuals. The understanding of each ~ ~ Our work, too, is a bridge of wings, con other that we have gained in our cross-cultural marriage helps ceived in the shadow of those two great suspen- considerably in meshing together two very different systems sion bridges between New York (present) and of doing theater. But aside from the personal reasons, our China (past). goal has been not just to preserve the old forms (although they do deserve to be protected and conserved ). We are equally Stephen Kaplin is an alumnus <,fthe Puppetry concerned with finding new directions for the traditional forms Program of the University of Connecticut. He is afrequent to evolve, and for our artists to evolve . The works are a means contributor to Puppetry International. Kuang-Yu Fong is a in which the Chinese artists can get beyond the fixed rigidity director and performer for Chinese Theatre Works. of their training, picking up on the others' skills in improvisation and spontaneous creation. The Western artists meanwhile absorb some of the discipline and consummate technique of the Chinese performers. Together, both Eastern and Western 43 artists make the same journey from opposite directions. .- At the same time that we seek to build understanding OWL GLASS between ourselves as creators and our artists as collaborators, we also seek to foster change in our audience- which is 5 | PUPPETRY CENTER: made up predominantly of English speaking Westerners (al- ~3'1 [email protected] SIN though we also have a large Chinese following among middle- class families with children) Many of these kids have al ready begun to be assimilated into the Borg-cube of Ameri- 1 't:=-a~ 1 -1, CI= can popular culture. Our productions give them a deep view -n:@8,- of Chinese culture, far removed from the glib Kung-Fu ste- reotypes on TV and Hollywood films. 319 No. Calhoun, West Liberty, IA 52776 0 ... . DA . A -

r--1: T ~TS SELLARS

Snails Surround the Stage: Opera Director Peter Sellars Recalls his Years in Puppetry

In May, 2001, 1 accompanied my friend Peter Sellars to Harvard University m receive his cilma mater's Medal of the Arts. Peter is widely known as a director oftheaterand opera, but few people are aware that his career began as an apprentice at Pittsburgh's Lovelace Marionette Theater. During the course of the weekend. Sellars and actor John Lithgow (a fellow Harvard alum) engaged in a public dialogue before an audience of undergraduates. in which Sellars reflected on his early theater training. 1 was struck by the fact that Peter spent mc,st ofthe hour recalling his years as a teenage puppeteer. Here is a partial transcription of that conversation. -Norman Frisch

Peter Sellars: My whole career started out outdoors, be- allowed to start pulling the curtain, and I spent two years pull- cause as a child I was very interested in amphibians and ing the curtain. Which is why curtains in my shows now are reptiles. I had a huge snake collection. And then when 1 very, very important. You know, there is a very subtle science was 10, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a really cool person in of it all, and a lot of my shows are merely very elaborate the eighth grade named Cary Stickney- he was the older discussions of "the curtain." [laughter from room] The the- brother of my best friend Morgan Stickney- was moving ater did one adult show every year- like Pinget's Architruc, with his whole family to Alabama. Cary was really cool , and Cocteau 'K Eiffel TowerWedding Party- they were doing by far the coolest person I had ever met, and he appren- the French surrealists! So the first plays 1 ever read were ticed at this local mai'ionette theater, The Lovelace Mari- Beckett- because Pinget and Beckett were really close- and onettes, on Ellsworth Avenue. I had no idea what appren- basically anything published by Grove Press. ticeship was . I didn't know what a marionette theater was. John Lithgow: Who were the people in charge of this was I just knew that it was what Cary Stickney did, and he theater? cool. And so I said, when the family was ready to move to Alabama, "Cary, can I apprentice in your place?" And he Sellars: Well, they were just extraordinary. The woman who said, "Sure, 1'11 tell them about you." ran it, Margo Lovelace- of course she would be named So on my tenth birthday, 1 went and knocked on the Margo- would travel every year to some new part of the world. door of this marionette theater and said, "I am here to ap- So every summer, she would go to the Yucatan Peninsula, or prentice." And I had no clue- at all!- except that it was to Moscow to the State Central Puppet Theater to study with cool. They did shows every weekend- Hansel and Gretel, Obraztsov, or to Osaka to study with the Bunraku. And so I Jack and the Beanstalk, Rumplestiltskin kind-of-things. But was learning bunraku puppetry when I was 12. My first im- it was the Midwestern commedia dell'arte tradition [laugh- ages of theater were Javanese shadow puppets. because the ter from audience], and you learned by doing- not in a room Lovelace Theater itself was a garage painted fuchsia, cov- with mirrors, but in a room with audiences. I packed pop- ered with puppets and masks from all over the world. And I corn and cleaned toilets for the first four years, and 1 watched entered this magical world of theater as a ten-year-old, where every show like a hawk. And then in my second year, I was the whole world was really there in this Pittsburgh garage. PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 29

And so at ten, my favorite play was Rend Daumal's En Ga- When you're apprenticing, you watch what *'6 r-r-r-rde- he was one of the French surrealists, who wrote the theater company does- and the whole time you a great, profound book called Mount Analogue; although are telling yourself that when you 're in charge, it'11 his little play is somewhat less serious and involves such all be different. [laughter from audiencel And then . immortal moments as the stage direction "Snails surround you go and do a show that's exactly an imitation of - the stage and begin to slobber." [laughter from audience 1 what you've seen. And then, as Balanchine says, Now that's a pleasure, learning to be able to stage some- after a while you cease to know the moment when thing like that. And those were some of my earliest theater you've stopped imitating and suddenly it's your own challenges. It was not until 1 was 25 that I saw or read an voice. But at first, you're just imitating things you've Arthur Miller play- 1 had no idea that kitchen seen, and I got it all wrong. I did not get that the ' sink drama existed. I was simply totally into humor comes from deliberately acknowledg- theater as the miraculous, the magical, the ing things: from the collusion between Punch transformational, the astounding, the every- and the audience, about the things that we all '* thing that exists just on the edge of con- know to be true or not true. 1 really did not get 1 sciousness, everything that is metaphysi- at first that the humor is really based on Punch · 1 cal and infinite. And I learned that the- coming out and saying [in Punch voice] "This is ater was the way to touch that. And that a really, really ugly audience. Judy, you really don't was very cool by me. even want to come out and see them. They are so And then, after a while, I began to ugly!" And so Punch goes on and on about differ- learn a lot of very intense lessons that you can ent people in the audience being so ugly, and about only learn by performing in department store windows- how lovely he is himself- and of course he has a during Christmas season. Probably as a kid, my most in- hunchback, and a giant pot belly, and a hook nose tense lessons were around Punch and Judy. You know, with a huge wart on it. And the whole thing is about Punch and Judy is extremely violent. It's a big subject now, beauty and ugliness. And this supremely ugly stump of course- violence on television- how many murders a of a puppet talks about his Judy- Judy the Beauty, day kids see. kids and the movies. Kids on average see a with pearly white teeth, or curly white teeth- and lot of deaths each day on TV- I forget how many. 200 or he goes on and on. And it becomes about the ugli- -~ something like that. The question is, does Hollywood cre- est person in the world talking about ugliness, and ate violence in the society? Thisis a really one ofthe most beauty- and ends up going to this really extraordi- important questions in front of the country right now. And nary, double place, where you are deliberately see- of course I learned about that really firsthand playing Punch ing double, and everybody is suddenly given per- and Judy on the streets. mission to acknowledge things that they themselves Punch and Judy is really nice show. His wife comes are, in this weird way. out, and Punch beats her up with a large stick. Then the And of course it's a total fantasy, and the pup- baby comes out, and he throws it out the window. Then the pet himself is a block of wood, and the baby actu- next door neighbor's dog comes in and he kills it; and then ally needs to be a bowling pin wrapped in a hand- the neighbori and then the policeman; then the hangman, kerchief. And only then can you throw it out the and he does the same. And then finally the Devil. And some- window into the audience, and it's fine. And when times a crocodile. too. Anyway, it's a very basic plot [laugh- you get the right balance of the humor, you get ter from audience] and the action is pretty straightforward- that the best Punch puppet is just a block of wood or so I thought. But of course, I didn't know. So at 11 or 12, with a blotch on it. I began by carving the puppet 1 began performing my first Punch and Judy shows just very realistically. But you learn that the realism of imitating what I had seen, and the children cried. They were it is exactly counter-productive, and the life of it horrified. I mean it was horrible! And Margo Lovelace comes from the way you move it. And the more had to call me into her kitchen and give me a lesson or two, because I had gotten it totally wrong. 30 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

1 beat up and hopeless the puppet itself is, the more Lithgow: Did you have a lot ofaccomplices? exciting the performance can be. And this was re- Sellars: I did. One of the really great things that happened ally my first big lesson in theater: Carve a realis- to me was that there was an official drama instructor whose tic face on Punch and the kids cry. But if you can name was Francis Bellizia. 1 remember him well. And it's fair allow it to be art, it becomes an act of liberation. to say that he really hated me, and in the one theater course And that if Punch and Judy is done correctly, you that I ever took in my life, he gave me a C. [laughter from have a group of screaming, freaked-out, neurotic audience] So I decided: OK, that's enough for theater class. children- Ilaughter from audience 1- who leave the , going to do that anymore, ever. And so. after deal- 45 minutes later in a state of such I m just not performance ing with this high school drama instructor, I ended up at Har- calm and bliss with the world, because you have vard precisely because there was no theater department. actually, in a shamanic way, purged all of this vio- In high school, 1 did about forty productions: big ones their systems. But if you do it wrong, lence from on the mainstage, and little ones like Self-accusation just added all this violence to you have tucked in somewhere, and big multime- their system . And you come to dia spectacles. Stravinsky's History ofa artistically which strategies learn Soldier was a big deal for me; I spent the violence, and which ** purge six months rehearsing that. because it was actually deepen the strategies huge and difficult. And I did a huge pro- violence. And so that was intense duction of Shakespeare' s Tempest with stuff to be dealing when I was, puppets and people that was really wild. like eleven. And a whole lot of obnoxious Chekhov one-acts. and lot of other obnoxious things Lithgow: At that age, were as well- which you have to, in high school . you already looking ahead to a life in puppetry ? beginning in my sophomore Or a life in theater or opera? How did you imag- And in the summers, ine yourfuture? year in high school , 1 was running a children's theater company on the streets of Denver, Colorado- with my sister Juliet- Sellars: 1 still wanted to be a professional her- doing six shows a day in Larimer Square in downtown Den- petologist. I laughter from audience] I still had ver for shoppers. And when you're doing six shows a day, on like fifty snakes at home- a really great, great the pavement, in the hot sun, you learn to make your show snake collection- and I was pretty obsessed with better than it was. The urge to self-improvement is tremen- that. But then I went to boarding school, and of dous, because you will not eat that night if your show does course I wanted to keep doing shows- but it just not get better soon. And so that aspect of rny craft was devel- took too long to teach people how to work the oped working in front of audiences who were incredibly criti- puppets. So after a while I gave up, and 1 just cal. And you had to learn how to make people stop- that's a started doing shows with people in them. And I very big deal- watch the whole show- which is also a very started doing all those plays published by Grove b'ig deal- and then at the end, put money in the hat. And that's Press- because those were the plays I knew. serious discipline, especially for a 15-year-old, And I had one really great German teacher If nothing else, you learn how to command an audi- who had just come back from Berlin, where he ence, how to just grab people's attention and keep it. That had seen the first performances of Peter Handke's was very powerful training, being out there on the pavement Otfending the Audience, the early Fassbinder with America every day. You know, you hear artists conde- work, the first Peter Stein productions at the scending to the American audience all the time. "Well, what Schaubuhne- it was a really amazing period in do you expect, that's America." But you know if you actually German theater. So while a lot of kids in high spend your time out there, on the pavement with them every school were doing Kiss Me, Kate on the mainstage, day, that's a big cure for talking down to an audience, ever. we were doing Peter Handke's Self-accusation at Because the audience is so much smarter than you are , and is my school, in a tiny little room for an audience of so tired of being insulted by you, and by having their intelli- twelve, and feeling very proud of ourselves. gence lowered by your inadequacy. You learn very quickly. I would be doing some wild show very successfully on the streets of downtown Denver; and then eventually I would bring it here to Harvard, where people would say "Oh, it's just too avant-garde" and The Crim~m would attack it vi- PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 31 ciously. And I had just done it all summer for housewives And I'm not kidding, these theaters were '-~ and their kids in shopping malls in Denver- no problem ! In overwhelming. The Mongolian puppeteers wore 1 fact, the real public is not stupid. You just need to be with these bands around them with the bullets- artil- _1 them, and respect them, and listen to them, and be prepared lery belts- and the puppet characters were these 1«7-97 to engage in real dialogue, and you'll learn a whole lot. So fierce freedom fighters from Mongolian legend. , 5- growing up in puppetry was great. It had to be popular the- And you could feel the Mongolian language just i " 44.11~ ater. So I'd grown up with that discipline, and I always felt, tearing through the room with a rage that no ac- · 1~ that period- but a pup- from the time I joined the Lovelace Marionette Theater, that tor was permitted during 1 4 I was working professionally. 1 never experienced the usual pet could get away with it. And the same, 1 re- '*-_. 4 moment of transition from student to professional work, so it member, with the Rumanian theater, which did a ~ was no big deal. When I graduated from high school, when I show about the horror of the Ceausescu years, ~ graduated from college, I just kept on working. but in a form which the puppets were allowed to '~ express. Avwe* Lithgow: When you were in high school and began di- And so it was seeing these puppet theaters recting all of these productions, did you know that you in Moscow that really left its mark on me- the- were good? ater that mattered, and that meant everything to people in societies that were so closed that the Sellars: I knew that 1 was having a good time, which was puppet theater was the only true voice left to them. the main thing. My family has always lived in Pittsburgh, These companies were into wild, surrealist im- western Pennsylvania, and a little bit in Ohio, but one day agery. Like Punch and Judy: in order not to be my mother got tired of that and decided that we would move run out of town, you had to cloak everything in to Paris. My mother is a high school English teacher. She did metaphor. You had to translate it once or twice- not speak one word of French. But when I was 18, after high it couldn'tjust sit there in the open, but had to be and before coming to Harvard, we moved to Paris: school transformed into something mythical, something my mother, my younger sister, and 1. And I began seeing five airborne that the censor could not just nail down shows a week. This was when Peter Brook had just arrived in on the spot. And so it was a truly poetic theater, Paris, Patrice Chereau was doing his early work. I went to and was overwhelming to me. Berlin and to the Schaubuhne for the first time. It was 1976. an incredible moment in European theater. 1 went to muse- Lithgow: Peter, you have just described an and read, and wrote in my notebooks. ums all day, extraordinary education in international And of course I wanted to see puppetry. So I arts and politics by the age of 18. How joined the French Union Nationale de la Marionette- much ofthis was your own doing, or which is the French puppetry union , allied with how much Of it did your parents the international puppetry union ( UNIMA ). expose you to? And that union has a worldwide conference every four years, and that year it was in Sellars: This is just Moscow. So I went to Moscow at the what happened. All these end of my year in Paris, and found * ,\ / ,~ 1 things were more-or-less to- that the Soviets had stacked the 4, tally accidental. That's what's festival with seven shows from so cool. 1 didn't go out in search around the world, seven from of any of them- they all found me. the Soviet Union, and seven from So by the time I got to Harvard, I really the Soviet satellite nations. So that wanted to know about all those things. All meant that we saw puppet shows from these things I hadjust seen in the Soviet Union Kazakhstan, Tadzhikistan, Rumania, Yugosia- in these puppet theaters was referring to stuff that via, Czechoslovakia- incredible work! And you 1 didn't understand. So I arrived at Harvard with know in most of these places, Russian had to be the a lot of questions, and I skipped most of the in- language of performance in the official state theaters.But troductory courses and just went straight to the in most of these puppet theaters, performance could still be professor who I thought could answer a question in the local dialect, and so the puppet theater became the the- for me, I had just seen all these Central Asian ater of liberation. 32 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL puppet shows and didn't understand a word of them, but I During my final year at Harvard, in the desperately needed to know, "What is going on here?" 1 spent summer following my graduation, there was a myundergraduateyearsjusttrying tounderstandallthe things gap in the programming of the big theater I had seen in France and in Russiaduringtheyearbelore. 1 space-the old administration ofthe Loeb The- ended up studying with Jurij Striedter in the Slavic Depart- ater had gone away and Bob Brustein and the ment, specializing in the Russian avant-garde: Meyerhold, new A.R.T. operation had not yet arrived. So Eisenstein, the poetics of the Russian Revolution, for a few months, 1 ran the Loeb with a bunch Mayakovsky, all of that- all of which became a big filter for of students. and we ended our summer season me , artistically. And architecture and visual arts also became with a production of Wagner's Ring Cycle. very important to me, since as a puppeteer I had trained in staged to all the great recordings with a cast of that also, through building my own stages, carving the pup- people and puppets. And it was a spec-tac-u- pets. painting the backdrops, and so on. 1 felt I needed to keep lar! It was a very big deal. It pulled together that up. So I took all these courses in psychoacoustics, space everything 1 had learned in high school, in col- perception, an amazing Hitchcock seminar, the early films of len on the streets in Denver, in the puppet the- D.W. Griffiths (the two-reelers- unbelievable- the beginning ater. in Europe- and a lot of the people who of film narrative), Cezanne watercolors- all of these courses would turn out to be my future collaborators that related to my puppetry came to see it. So 1 guess that was the beginning of my "grown up" career. Lithgow: When did you first connect with opera? This conversation between Peter Sellars and John Sellars: Well, in the puppet theater, you learn fast that kids Lithgow was presented on May 4, 20()1, at Adams don't like talk, talk, talk. talk, talk. And as soon as there's music House at Harvard University, sponsored by Learn- in a show. the kids get excited. And so, you just learn to stage ing from Performers, a program of the Office for everything to music. And in those days. 1 was doing really the Arts at Harvard. Thanks to Thomas Lee, Pro- really elaborate things: I was taking Beethoven's Sonata Op. gram Manager. for providing the audiotape from 31, No. 2 and staging Rapunzel to it. 1 was attracted to these which this text was transcribed. super-elaborate pieces of music. and I would make the drama fit the niusic. And the kids thought that was really cool. So 1 Norman Frisch has worked ,far and wide as was working with music all the time. because music is what a producer of theatre festivals. and as a dime- makes the world go round in puppetry. And eventually. I dis- tor (,1 programming. He is c tirrently at the Snug covered that music could be live, and that you could meet and Harbor Cultural Center on Stitten Island, NY. collaborate with real musicians... so it just followed. The other thing that happened to me as a puppeteer was that I got plugged into the wall. The big thing in puppetry at that time involved recording the script on tape, so that you could concentrate on working the puppets to the voices that were on the tape. And the audience was supposed to just think that the show was miked. when in fact it was on tape. 1 mean. it was a little canned. But what it did do was make me request from my parents the heaviest Sony reel-to-reel tape recorder on Earth- unbelievably heavy and huge, that 1 had to carry to my shows. But it was stereo! So 1 could record the music on one track and the voices on the other- oh, my God! 1 got into multi-tracking when lwas 12! Sowhenl arrived at Harvard, 1 ended up living in the Electronic Music Studio headed by Ivan Tcherepnin, where 1 ended up creating all the soundtracks 4 for all my shows, but also eventually became seriously interested in electronic music and video and other electronic art forms. And that al 1 Ilowed from that aspect of puppetry which ~~* is just plugged into the wall. The Cotsen Center b for Puppetry and the Arts

A laboratory for training and experimentation in the art of puppet theatre Janie Geiser, Director

= t * Cal Arts School of Theatre /4* Susan Solt, Dean ~ Visiting Artists have included: f f Lee Breuer

graduate and Pablo Cueto undergraduate study available Jane Henson Dan Hurlin

Ken Jacobs

Jennifer Miller Zaven Pard

Roman Paska

Larry Reed

Michael Sommers Cal Arts' 60 acre campus is located 27 miles north of Los Angeles 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia, CA 91355 Mark Sussman For admission: 800-292-2787 (in CA) 800-545-2787 (out of state) e-mail: [email protected] Website: www.calarts.edu Paul Zaloom 34 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

The Chaos Factor: A preview of the Avant-Garde Opera, Red Beads dling the directorial chores) have teamed up with composer Ushio Torikai to produce an avant-garde opera with no less than twelve musicians, twenty-nine technicians, a half dozen dancers and singers, and as many volunteers as it takes to operate the huge fans and fabric. In this production, even the simplest of effects requires ten peoples the trick is to let nothing touch the stage floor. Everything is kept aloft including dancers in flying rigs, and eighty-foot pieces of imported Japanese silk blown by a score of electric fans. Before the final workshopping of Red Heads in late August at MASS MoCA. Twist discussed the challenges of collaboration. No stranger to teaming up with other artists, he's collaborated in many productions, but most of them have been accom- by Donald Devet plished within predetermined boundaries of time, space, and materials. Red Beads is proving to be a different kind of col- Basil Twist takes great pleasure in attempting to defy gravity. laboration. Besides the challenge of mounting an immense Symphonie Fantastique, his award winning visual interpreta- production, Twist is finding that there are few boundaries when tion of Hector Berlioz's music, took place entirely in a giant it comes to what can be done on stage. aquarium where feathers and fabrics hypnotically undulated. No longer working within the four walls of a fish tank. Now Twist is again attempting to keep objects afloat, except he's enjoying what he calls "the chaos factor." "There are times this time rather than using water as his medium, he is using when you let the chaos loose and that's when you get some- the very air we breathe. thing magnificent," he says. "That is the ultimate. When you Lee Breuer, co-founder and co-artistic director of Mabou just let it rip. Let the fans blow a huge piece of fabric and you Mines, saw Symphonie Fantastique during its record break- have no idea of what it's going to do. You know it will go up. ing run in New York in 1999 and wanted to use the same It will become a flame of energy. It's endlessly fascinating. visual concept for telling a story that he had been working on There's a wildness you can conjure up. If you try to tame it or since the mid 1970s. Red Beads is loosely based on a tradi- shape it like a wild beast you lose a lot." No date has been set tional Siberian folk tale- a coming of age story. As a daugh- for the public premiere of Red Beads: there's still a lot of ter approaches her 13th birthday, her father promises her the work left to do. Now that Twist has found the right fabrics, "sacred beads," a metaphor for menstrual blood. The girl's though, and the right fans (variable speed so as not to drown mother is dead but her spirit still haunts the family. In Breuer's out the singers in the orchestra pit) he can get down to figur- latest version, which has been called a "Nutcracker for Hal- ing out how to most effectively use these elements to connect loween," the mother is a witch who hides behind a closed with the story. It sounds like a lot of work, but there's joy in door. When she does appear, she is incarnated by yards of the process. As Twist says, "You can look at the fabric mov- fabric. ing forever. It's like watching a flag in the wind or clouds." Breuer first directed the story on a small stage using three actors reciting dialogue. Thirty years later, Red Beads Donald Devet is a director in New York. He is a past presi- has morphed into a huge production in terms of staging and dent of UNIMA- USA, and was for years a member of Grey personnel . Twist (handling the puppetry) and Breuer (han- Seal Puppets. He is Media Editor for Puppetry International . PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 35

-* Irl

.=45 \ 85-1 -, , ./ '16

f , r~'/JE c A &4* a » /185 + 3.. 1 W

L .. 1 El Retablo de Maese Pedro (Master Peter's Puppet Show) by Spanish composer Manuel de Falla

production was written in 1923 in re- - *AI This f k * sponse to a challenge by the Princess de :/* it 51 *,1.- Polignac. Manuel de Falla eventually had ·~,14' 'Wil'1 «36,·«, *rt performed at de Polignads residence in Paris, r61 . having beaten out both Stravinsky and Satie ./ -i/./.4 r h, for the honor. The production pictured here is by La Tia Norica. Cadiz, Spain. 2001.

The idea for the story comes from the Cervantes classic in which Don Quixote. watching an outdoor puppet show. becomes so swept away by the action that he forgets he is watching a puppet show, and rushes in to aid the heroes in their battle.

Manx thanks to Beckie KrareiI. for xectiring pliolos and information. 36 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

The Barber of S 11e

by Amy Trompetter

Twenty years ago, Susan Feldman, Artistic Director of Arts Rossini's opera was not written for puppets, unlike at St. Ann's, and Rinaldo Tazzini. President of the Brooklyn Haydn's operas which were conceived expressly for mari- Opera Society. invited me to build and direct large puppets onettes with liter:11 character representations. Relishing the for an opera buffa, The Barber cd Seville. Susan and Rinaldo invitation to create a visual interpretation of the libretto and hired me, on faith, after seeing a fifteen minute performance to let the words convey the actual storyline, I built fifty of my one-woman Punch and Judy hand-puppet show with roughly-styled papier-machd puppets, masks, reliefs, and a skirt as stage. Michael Feldman of the Orchestra of St. non-articulating figures. Luke's conducted the musicians and singers from the Met Everything in our opera was made from one material: and NYC Operas. The production received favorable press paper. The puppets were papier-mache overclay molds. The and was produced in both '83 and '84 in St. Ann's Church in coloring was from colored papers rather than paints. The Brooklyn Heights. set was made of cardboard-covered with black paper, and PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL r

operated as a series of panels that moved into various con- The Barber of Seville follows a typical commedia figurations to represent the town square or the interior of a dell'arte plot in which the clever servant outsmarts his slingy house. The set was composed of rectangular panels which master in order to enjoy some of life's happiness, in this case suggested the architecture, rather than tleshing it out in de- a marriage for two age-appropriate lovers. Beautiful Rosina tail. These same panels were versatile enough to indicate is trapped in the household of her lecherous. old guardian. the slanting shoulders and torso of a dominant image of Doctor Bartolo. He is desperately plotting to marry her that Figaro in the finale. very day. In our puppet opera, a large figure of Rosina is not The singers gave voices to the puppets from the sides only held captive in a tower with a balcony. she is the tower of the stage. They sang in English using a translation from and the tower is her torso. A tlat papier-machE panel with the Italian by Goldovsky and Sarah Caldwell. Two large ornamented relief acts as both the tower and the body of papier-machE hands held the singers, who were always vis- Rosina, the object of the Count's affection. Set and character ible on either side of the stage. The audience was free to are interchangeable. look from the singer to the puppet and back again. The pup- A miniature figure of Count Almaviva walks on a tight- peteers were dressed in black and were visible as operators rope up to the tower's balcony window with his heart in his who threw the focus back to the puppets. hand, as the tenor delivers his first aria. The balcony shutters Occasionally a puppet and singer acknowledged each remain shut, Alinaviva cannot deliver his love. and he falls other in a scene together. The baritone, Alan Glassman, who off the tightrope demonstrating the violence of love rejected. was cradled in a giant hand, stage left. mirrored the moves When Almaviva sings again, Rosina's giant limbs float, until of a life-sized Figaro figure cradled in a large hand stage he arrives exactly in the center of this erotic arrangement of right. Alan's introductory aria boasted that Figaro knew arms and legs. She is large and in control of this seductive everybody's business in the town, since he was the facto- moment. Later. her intimidating guardian, Dr. Bartolo, is a turn of Seville. Multiple puppet images appeared simulta- large mask with giant hands in pursuit of a little, guilty Rosina neously, and several pairs of Figaro's busy hands opened to who is at his mercy. In this way, size illuminates the shifting let loose a miniature Figaro at the culmination of this aria. power relationships. At the end of the entire opera, a fourteen foot mask of Figaro When Bartolo accuses Rosina of deception by writing a popped up and the audience saw that it was Figaro who had letter in secret, Rosina gains the upper hand through the mui- been manipulating the world of the play, while holding the tiplication of the image of three "Venus" reliefs. When Bartolo singers and the puppets in the palm of his hands. scolds her too harshly, these white reliefs are flipped to reveal We juxtaposed objects and puppets in shifting combi- a black interior with a thin outline around the rim. This frag- nations; to liberate the scenarios from the details of the plot. ile white outline is trembling as she cries. and to illuminate the inner dynamics, power struggles and Bartolo must act quickly to thwart the advances of Count desires of the characters. We refrained from premeditated Almaviva, who must also act quickly. The Count hires Figaro decisions about the uses of the puppets, and enjoyed in- to help him deceive Bartolo, and while Figaro sings of his venting scenarios through improvisation during the four attraction to money, the Count praises love. Giant masks and week rehearsal period. In every case. we strove to demon- hands of Figaro and the Count juggle hearts and dollars re- strate the overriding essence of a moment, rather than to spectively Figaro disguises the Count as a student, as a sol- reenact the literal detail of a sequence 01 events already dier and then as a music teacher, outsmarting the real music expressed by the text. We strove for independence and sepa- teacher Don Basilio, who is the dull-witted friend of Doctor ration of the elements of image, music and text. Bartolo. Mistaken identity is an opportunity lor disguising a mask in a mask. 38 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

Don Basilio proposes ruining Count Almaviva's chances trionics with terse metaphors. My own raw aesthetic cuts by spreading false rumors and destroying his reputation. A through the sophisticated ornamentation of high opera. The puppeteer pulls a cloth tongue from the mouth of the life- tensions between the two forms enhance each other. sized figure of Don Basilio. This long tongue shows exactly ...... how to ensnare and defeat a household as it wraps itself around each papier- macht figure and pulls it down. While not a lit- The fifty papier- macha puppets of the original Barber of Seville eral gossip session, this action with the vile tongue enmesh- puppet opera burned in 1987, while in storage in Newark. NJ. Ms. ing the household demonstrates the consequences of slander. Trompetter is building new puppets at Blackbird Theater's work- Later in the opera, Figaro upsets Bartolo's household shop and performance space in Rosendale. NY. The revival of the while shaving him, arranges an elopement full of mishaps for Barber (tfSeville puppet opera is slated for the spring of 2003 at St. the lovers, and succeeds in uniting Rosina and Almaviva in Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn's DUMBO, with music by Kristjan marriage. Cardboard shadow puppets, easily introduce the Jarvi's Absolute. Performance dates are in early May. Check web- many props of ladder, ring and pistol needed for this final site for updates: www.blackbirdtheater.org or www.artsatstanns.org scene. In order to hide from the notary hired by Bartolo, the lovers and Figaro disappear in a flash by turning the card- Amy Trompetter, director, scenographer andpuppeteer, cre- board puppets perpendicular to the shadow screen . ates visual theater including outdoor pageants, giant puppet The elusive yet anticipated happiness of the wedding operas, and hand puppet shows. She is a Senior Lecturer at finale, and the clever deceptions needed to achieve it, drive Barnard CoHege/Columbia University, and is a founder of the opera. Western opera is in love with elongated emotional B[ackbird Theater. moments, while puppetry delights in expressing lengthy his- PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 39

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pr, 40 PUPPET HISTORY A Column by John Bell , From Ubermarionettes to Television Puppetry:/nk Percy MacKaye and Remo*Bufano

A favorite pastime of puppeteers is to ponder (or com- plain about) the persistent perception of puppet theater as ... . , 4 children's entertainment, a perception which had particu- - .U~ 6 1 I ak:.r lar currency in twentieth-century American culture. Pup- peteers know that this misperception is peculiarly mod- . , . ern and particularly western, and that for most of human i:f. , t :,1 f, : history, puppets and masks have been key elements of 1 . iir'..d. W 4 T- central cultural performances. The idea that puppets were W . better suited for children rather than adults seems to have grown in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and cer- , -42 ---7 " I il. tainly came into full effect in the early decades of the 2-. , C- ~ ' ~ ~~~~ twentieth century. But atthe same time there were voices in an opposite camp (foremost among them Edward Gor- don Craig), heralding masks and puppets as forms which could be central to an emerging modern art theater. In other words, the development of a modern (or postmodern) w'fs ' (» i~_ * a . .#...R 4 artistic puppet theater for adults has persisted over the - past hundred years, in constant parallel to the idea that - 0. 1 puppets are best understood by kids. But who was doing what when? That's an interesting question, in part an- -,6 * swered by the work of Percy MacKaye and Remo Bufano.

Cahokia in Saint Louis. Marion MacKaye with "super puppet" Percy MacKaye's "Ubermarionnette"

Percy Mackaye is famous in American theater history living in Missouri. (The subject of Native Americans, like the mostly for inventing the modern historical pageant, in subject of African Americans, was always interestingly prob- which a town performs its own symbolic history, using lematical in the histories created by these pageants.) There's mostly amateur actors and a wide-ranging language of vi- an intriguing photograph of this giant marionette in Arvia sual imagery. For MacKaye , these theatrical events were MacKaye Ege's The Power of the Impossible: The Life Story in fact the performance of democracy itself. MacKaye's of Percy and Marion MacKave which makes one wonder how first pageant was in an artists' colony in Cornish, New exactly it was operated, and with what success. Hampshire, in June of 1905, and it started a craze for such According to Arvia MacKaye, the St. Louis Masque "de- theatrics throughout the United States. The American picted the struggles and goals of social civilization as it is fo- Pageant Movement even had an international effect, es- cused on the history and development of the city of St. Louis." pecially in Soviet Union, which took MacKaye's innova- The Masque began with stories of "the ancient American tions as a model for revolutionary communal spectacles. mound-builders, symbolized by the colossal figure of an In- MacKaye, like so many alternative theater makers dian, Cahokia," who was a "huge movable super-puppet, some of the early twentieth century, was willing to consider all 25 feet in height, seated upon a great Indian mound at the rear sorts of theater techniques, and for his St. Louis Masque of the stage." Other elements of this Mound Builder scene in- of 1914, he decided to include an over-life-sized mari- cluded the appearance of constellations of stars and "the gi- onette named Cahokia, who would symbolize the spirit of gantic sculptured figures of Hiloha and Noohai, representing Native Americans whom European settlers found already the elements of Heal and Cold." Over seven thousand St. Louis P U PPETRY INTERNATIONAL 41

residents performed this show, for an audience of 100,00() at Edward Gordon Craig. The MacKayes had met Craig in Paris, each of the four performances. and Percy corresponded with him. Cahokia was clearly in- MacKaye's 1914 masque was typical because of its ide- spired by Craig's 1907 essay "The Actor and the alistic ethos. The St. Louis Masque concluded with " Imagi- Ubermarionette," which proposed the radical idea that pup- nation and Love finally subdulingl the chief adversary Gold," pets could do things actors couldn't. MacKaye thus joins a while "a league of brotherhood, the League of Cities, is select group ofMidwestern American theater makers (the oth- evoked. " ers are Michael Carmichael Carr and Sam Hume) who were MacKaye, like many innovative directors and design- directly influenced by Gordon Craig, and who made modern ers of the early twentieth century, was heavily influenced by "art" theater with puppets (for "adults") in the U. S.

Remo Bufano, from Avant-Garde to Television

The most interesting of the early "art theater" puppeteers was Remo Bufano, whose work with the Provincetown Playhouse was mentioned in the last Puppet History column. Bufano is connected to MacKaye because both worked with Robert Edmund ("Bobby") Jones, another Craig-0-phile who is considered one of the greatest and most innovative scenic designers of the twentieth-century American stage. Jones designed MacKaye's + 7 -f\'. 3 ,;i ~ ' ~ r *·,. Shakespe arean pageant .., . ..'." 4 - . j , I 1. *. Caliban, another large-scale

work which, among other -7 < 1~:'/~.*S '/ ,•t. things, included oversized masks, and was presented in ,/. Harvard Stadium in 1916. tl t Jones was also active in early f "' Provincetown Playhouse productions, and had designed The Paterson Strike i Pageant, an I. W. W. (Inter- national Workers of the i World) political spectacle 4 4 4 * performed in Madison Square Garden in 1913. P Bufano, who had 4 * grown up with the influence 47 f of New York City's Skilian marionette theaters, had begun to develop a repertoire of avant-garde puppet shows for adults, particularly linked with music through the support of a new-music organization called the League of Composers. It was through the League that Bufano, his wife Florence Flynn Bufano and others presented Manuel de Falla's El Retablo de Maese Pedro (goofily 42 P UPPETRY INTERNATIONAL translated as Master Peter's Puppet Show), an interpretation of Don Quixote's comically disastrous encounter with a pup- Ooops! in Dassia Posner's excellent article on vertep pet show from Cervantes's famous novel. In her menioir (Pi #11 ), we ran the wrong photo on page 27. Making Faces, caricaturist Aline Fruhauf relates her encoun- This is how it should have looked: ters with Bufano and his wife in the late twenties and thirties, and includes an interesting sketch she made of the

Bufanos and a third puppeteer rehearsing the de Falla piece 1> a . in 1930. Her drawing is a rare image of Bufano at work, and - *.-'=. captures nicely the simple intensity of his puppets.

Because of productions like El Retablo de Mae.ye Pedro, %-I. -rf" *. :,T'w-Flt,2-Fi Robert Edmund Jones asked Bufano to design giant mari- 01- p~r i onettes (once more, the influence of Gordon Craig's Obermarionette! ) for a production of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex at the Metropolitan Opera in 1931. Jenna Soleo, a gradu- *,//V/*im..ti/--W=r- p--/7., - J//7*9*, Il'..MI' . ate student at City University of New York, has recently ex- i mil-.1 ..'-9-- 4 the Bufano-Jones correspondence at the New York amined ~ ~"V'~~'»~~F==P ./. I - \ SLa Public Library for the Performing Arts, and has found inter- ..... , '**f.<*r esting exchanges between the two men about making mod- , ern theater with puppets. In one 1934 letter, Jones calls the Vertep of the Wooden Horse Puppet Theatre, St. Petersberg- the Oedipus Rex production "one of the most important things I scene of Rachel's lament. Note the numerous slits in the floor along have ever had anything to do with." He and Bufano discuss which the puppets were guided. You can also just see puppeteer set. other puppet projects, including marionette scenes for a pro- Igor Folkin's- arms behind,% the duction of Hamlet, and a puppet production of Maeterlinck's ¥\ 7 Pellt·as and M~lisande:and Jones tells Bufano how much he was impressed by a Bufano puppet play (The hfanta on a A ~/ Holiday) performed by a Los Angeles "Little Theater" in a 54 Hollywood garden. j:,, 1/0 Interestingly enough, the Bufano-Jones letters show that Jones assisted Bufano's early experiments with television pup- Blood From a Turnip petry by introducing Bufano to producers at NBC television. We should note that this was in February of 1940, very early in the history of television puppetry. Jones was quite opti- /4 --3~> RI's Onlu Late Night Puppet

possible combination of Bufano's puppets . . -4-- 4 Salon- bringing the best in mistie about the 4 , and television. and wrote to Bufano: "I said [to Alfred Morton 0 9 emerging puppeteers from of NBC] that, given the proper circumstances, you might be- - New York and New England come the Walt Disney of television!" That, of course, never fr to localaudiences, came to be. Bufano died in an airplane crash in 1948 as he was returning east from California. But by that time he had 0 www.perishable.org/stage 2 already made experiments with television puppetry, and it's clear that he had at least eight years to consider and develop Perishable Theatre Arts Center his work in that direction. What would he have done in the Providence RI 02903 new medium'? Would his experiments have included the kinds of puppet art theater for adults which characterized his ear- Announcing the sixth season of lier work? Blood From a Turnip, Rhode Island's finest late-night puppetry salon for adult audiences. It's an interesting trajectory from MacKaye's Cahokia The salon makes its home at Perishable Theatre, puppet and Bufano's avant-garde marionette spectacles to the located in downtown Providence, RI. dawn of television puppets. And in fact, that particular moment when puppet innovation turned to television was an 10 pm on September 20, November 15, 21 and May 16 important step in the development of puppet theater as January 17, March children's entertainment. It's fascinating that these two strands Each show#'atures three to lipe short works, of modern western puppetry- avant-garde art theater and with charming and personable musical interludes by a live musician. children's entertainment- have been so closely and persis- tently related. BOOK REVIEW 43

THE SECRET LIFE OF PUPPETS .//0/'9*.''-4- by Victoria Nelson A ge# 2001, Harvard University Press , _00,

Let's be clear from the start. This is not a book about puppets. Beginning with - -0- r ~ ., allegory ot · -~ Or, rather, it is not a book about puppets as we know them in Socrates' 1% - the physical or theatrical world. It is a book about how the people receiving *--0 - . '*} , !9.7 idea of puppets and other human simulacrum- idols. mum- their knowledge of :·*, ~k .,· mies, mannequins, golem, robots, etc,- fit into the author's the world through + broader thesis (puppets play a part in four of the twelve chap- seeing the shadows ters) that. for the last 3()() years, western man has lacked a of a puppet show 1 legitimate outlet for a sense of the sacred- the supernatural- cast on the wall ol that used to be a quality of religion. Instead, we now find it acave, Ms. Nelson . ly popping up in depictions of puppets. science fiction. and other traces the repre- "fantastic" forms of literature and entertainment. sentation of pup- & -~1- Whyisit that when ourpuppets are depicted in the pc,pu-- petry from idols -Ii" t: 1 lar culture. they are almost always portrayed as evil or de- through golem to monic? From the evil ventrik,quist dummies iii the films Dead the puppet show in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew of /vight and Magic to the homicidal puppets and dolls in the Fair. She pays particular attention to depictions of pup- Puppet Master and Chi/d's Pkiv series. there are many ex- pets, dolls and mannequins in the writings of Heinrich amples of the idea of puppets casting fear in the mind of the von Kleist. E. T. A. Hoilmann. Giacomo Leopardi, general public. Ms. Williams argues that we have a need to Rainer Maria Rilke. and Bruno Schulz (whose stories imbue these puppets with a sense of the supernatural harking The Street c« Crocodiles were the basis for the Film by back to the days when we needed a belief- in the life of idols. the brothers Quay). She finds in these disparate au- "Why look at discourses (11)()1[t puppets and other hu- thors the common need to encapsulate a soul in the man simulacra rather than puppets in performance'?" the au- inanimate being. no matter what the consequences thor states. "Because even as puppet shows retain their time- might be. The book then expands into the realms of less theatrical charm. imagined puppets carryastrongercharge supernatural and fantastic literature in general. from of the 'uncanny' or suppressed holy." H. R Lovecraft to Philip K. Dick, returning to puppets toward the end to follow their progression in popular film from puppets to robots and on into the cyber realm. From a puppeteer's viewpoint, it's lascinating to follow an academic's perspective on the depiction ot our art form and to see her use of it in her thesis on our need for the supernatural." Ms. Willams has done an ainazing amount of research and followed the roots of news and views bings you of puppetry in a multitude of fascinating directions. UNWA-USA Puppet Theater international she should in....'.Ill.OU.165 My one small complaint is that, perhaps, tices .fiid k>s?N.'F. special evi,als corifer' otters dfscoun' 0/ r)\.P/,2,9 In her inter- 7 81,0/411 have watched more actual puppet theatre. :il & id' Fromotes Ir'leT[j;'(M pretation of Kleist'+ essay "On the Marionette The- ater." she decides that his description of the grace of 101...M,,0. f 01 .entber:.10 call 404 673 3089 marionette dancer is purely metaphorical because, G/\ 30309 the Stree N\'V Allarta D' 0[alte 1404 Spring as she states, "'Real' puppets. of course. do not operate Dear Readers: more gracefully than humans." As a puppeteer, I would beg to differ. lf you have enjoyed Puppetry international magazine, you might be interested in the web -review by Preston Foerder site for UNIMA-USA. www.unima-usa.org 44 BOOK REVIEW

The Puppet Giants of London

GOG and MAGOG: The Giants ofGuildhall: Their Real and Legendary History with an Account of Other Giants at Home and Abroad by F. W. Fairholt. 152 pp Escondido: The Book Tree, 2000. $16.95.

Ah! There's so much we don't 7 We all know that puppet the- know about the history of ater has often(especiallyin Europe) puppet theater! For instance, been a bastard, low-culture art, in the time of Shakespeare, chronicled more often in police we do know from Ben records than theater histories. as Jonson's drama Bartholomew Peter Schumann has pointed out. Fair that there was; a lively However, it was in the early and handpuppet scene in mid-nineteenth century that Ger- London's fairgrounds, and man and English academics in- probably throughout the rest vented a new subject called "folk- of England. But, in addition, lore," and people who began to call there was also by that time a themselves "folklorists" started to vivid and long-lived tradition explore the history of popular the- of English giant puppets (just -~ 1 ater in Europe and the rest of the 1 as there was in Spain. France, world. Of course, they ran into pup- and Belgium). In London, 4 z~ pets and masks everywhere they two giant puppets in particu- 4 turned. and thus began a new west- lar had by Elizabeth's time ern analysis of puppet theater as become the symbolic mascots f social, cultural, and artistic phe- or representatives of the city. , 4 nomenon. Fairholt's account is a These puppet giants were %1 1 great example of how this process Gog and Magog who, when L proceeded. lt seems appropriate to they weren't being paraded term it "a classic in its field." around London streets during practically every public fes- The Book Tree publishers cat- tival, lived in Guildhall, the .'.:1 egorize the work as "Social Sci- centerofcommonerpowerin 664-i--z«',4 ence: Folklore and Mythology," London. and one wonders if they think they "in#.~'~~'-~'~f:'-"t{'t·* A i . have on their hands an arcane text and about magical giants . Nowhere F. W. Fairholt's Gog The Tailor's Giant, Salisbury do Magog : The Giants of they seem to realize that they' ve Guildhall is an early nine- published a book about over- life- teenth-century history of those giants, and by some miracle sized puppets. F. W. Fairholt does indeed begin his work with The Book Tree publishing house in Oregon recently decided a mythical history of the characters Gog and Magog, to show to print a facsimile paperback version of this nineteenth-cen- how these characters were part of a larger British myth which tury classic. Fairholt's tome is interesting not simply because held that the Britains were all descended from Brutus, a refu- it sheds light on the roots of what is now a popular form of gee from the Trojan Wars. As Fairholt writes, "it became part modern puppetry, but because the book's original 1859 pub- of popular belief that the original name of London was New lication was part of the beginnings of the modern recognition Troy. and that it was founded by Brute or Brutus, the younger of puppet theater. son of Anthenorof Troy." Inother words, the English of the Renaissance were engaged in the creation of a wistful epic PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 45 history which fancifully connected them directly to the , ,. L__--·'__1~-4 --5*-4 -----'' greatest conflicts and the greatest literatures of the clas- -sa=s-~- ».»~'2*2 ~ --'~3»6/*-~~~~- sic world: the Trojan War. The classic world of the Greeks, of course, was extremely important to Renais- sance Europeans, and was articulated, examined, and *, William B. rosser Puppet Production -- celebrated especially in the arts, through which connec- S , OPERA IN FOCUS tions could be made between contemporary European J _-- cultures and their classic Roman and Greek predeces- 2002 REPERTOIRE sors. The connections were especially clear in Renais- sance Italy, and to lesser degrees in French and German i - lands: but the British isles had been outposts of the Ro- man empire, not seats of classic culture. However, with September 11- October 12 a proud Trojan the Brutus myth, Britons could claim 1 PAGLIACCI by LEONCAVALLO ancestry. Gog and Magog were thought to be native En- FAUST by GOUNOD glish giants who were defeated in battle by Brutus, and LA GlOCONDA by GIORDANO FIDDLER ON THE ROOFby BOCK & HARNICK then led in captive procession through the streets of London. Therefore, whenever Lord Mayor's Pageants, October 16 - November 16 royal processions, midsummer watches, and other pub- AN OPERATIC POTPOURRI lic street events took place, the giant puppet versions of CARMENby BIZET Gog and Magog appeared, and Londoners were re- GIANNI SCHICCI by PUCCINI THE BARBER OF SEVILLE by ROSSINI minded of the combination of native and foreign pow- PHANTOM OF THE OPERAby LLOYD WEBER ers which combined in a proud mythic history. For the HOLIDAYS Fairholt's book not only covers the London giants, HANSEL & GRETEL but also makes connections to giant puppet traditions of November 20, 21, 22, 23, 27 and 30 December 4,5,7,26,27,28 Chester, Coventry, Salisbury, and other English cities. January 2 and 4,2003 Fairholt also reviews the history of the slightly better- known continental giants of northern France and Bel A CHRISTMAS OFFERING December 11, 12, 14, 18, 19 and 21 gium- for example Gayant and his family, from the French city of Douai, and Antigonus of Antwerp. En- e-mail us: glish puppet dragons and Saint Christoper backpack [email protected] puppets also come under Fairholt's purview. For reservations call: Gog and Magog is wonderfully old- school . lots of 847-818-3220 long quotations from earlier sources, and not much social analysis or abstracted reflection. The book is nevertheless a landmark analysis of popular theater. It is illustrated with Fairholt's own fine period drawings of the giants, some of which reveal their structure: basket-wo- ir ven structures covered with cloth and sculpted heads THIS PUBLICATION and hands. Since the appearance of this book in 1859, ~. ~ AVAILABLE FROM hardly anything has been written in English about giant puppet traditions. Let me reiterate that point: for over U•M•I 140 years hardly anything has been written in England A BELL & HOWELL COMPANY or the United States about the history of European giant 'f ~ Box 78,300 North Zeeb Road puppets. The almost miraculous appearance of Fairholt's Ann Arbor, MI 48106 book now is a great opportunity to catch up on the roots 800-521-0600 toll free of one of the most popular forms of contemporary pup- 313-761-1203 fax pet theater. (The Book Tree: 1-800-700-TREE, or www.thebooktree.com) -review by John Bell 46 BOOK REVIEW

A Fresh Approach to Wayang Golek VOICES OF THE PUPPET MASTERS: The Wayang Golek Theater of Indonesia

by Mimi Herbert with Nur. S. Rahardio 252 pp. In the U.S.A.: Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. In Indonesia: Jakarta: The Lontar Founda- lion, 2002. $49.00, cloth.

At first glance, 1 expected this book to be a coffee-table * tween Hindu and version of a standard history of the Indonesian rod puppet Islamic tradi- tradition known as wayang golek. I was pleasantly surprised tions, spirituality

to discover that, while the book is filled with useful his- '. %: 6 and commercial- torical information, this information is presented in the form ism, magic and of ten engaging interviews. Author Mimi Herbert has been , »' 141.'.£ % everyday life. careful to provide readers with as wide a range of opinions In addition as possible by including interviews by both traditional and ~fl\\. '1 V, 3 , to the interviews, contemporary West-Javanese dalangs [puppeteers]. carv- 44 /9, f. , Herbert presents ers, historians, a shaman. a superstar, and even an Ameri- introductory in- can puppeteer and scholar, Kathy Foley, whose work is information on spired by wavang golek and its shadow theatre cousin, wayang golek in a moderately in formative but somewhat con- wavang kitlit.' This variety is the greatest strength of the fusing section on its origins and related theatrical forms, toi- book. The result is a fresh approach to the history of wavang lowed by several more valuable sections on the repertoire, go/ek, one in which oral history is given primacy, and in puppet construction. puppeteer, gamelan music, and current which conflicting opinions and interpretations are presented social function. Other sections in the book include a detailed side by side. Most importantly, one gains an understanding glossary of wayang go/ek terminology. a glossary of all the of the diverse paths that a so-called traditional theatrical characters from stories listed in the book, and short biogra- form can take. For example, one interview speaks firsthand phies of the interviewees. Additionally, each interview is con- about a family that has been performing a highly traditional cluded with one or several of the favorite stories of each in- wayang go/ek for twenty-two generations, while another, terviewee as engagingly told by that performer. Herbert also in contrast, speaks admiringly of modern innovations such provides useful summaries of fourofthe most common Hindu as fiberglass heads and puppets that can perform tricks such and Islamic source materials for the wa-vang golek: the as smoking real cigarettes. Mahabharata, the Ramayana, a Panji tale, and the story of In all of this, Herbert shows a sensitivity to the spiri- Damarwulan. These stories give a great deal of insight into tual aspects of wayang golek. While she does not always the structure and morality of wavang golek performances. understand the mystical specifics of the form, she shows a This beautiful book also has color photographs of ex- clear respect for the fact that shaman and superstar alike quisite wavang golek puppets, both antique and modern, on view the puppets as " the path to God." 2 Wayang golek is nearly every page . These photographs are well -chosen and accompanied by centuries of tradition, and comes from a areas informative about the theatrical form as the text. Herbert place in which the dalang has been, and to varying degrees and her collaborators have been careful not only to visually still is, a spiritual leader. Additionally, art is recognized as document the puppets used by each interviewee, but also to having philosophical, religious, and cultural meaning/ even photograph a wide variety of puppets that inform one as to if that meaning is sometimes imposed by the government the appearance of most of the major characters, as well as the in the form of puppeteers being asked, for example, to in- sometimes vast differences in puppets based on region, story, clude material on "family planning."4 The interviews in and time period. this book all reveal the interplay, and often overlap, be- PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 47

Herbert does make the mistake of letting the docu- ence including historians, those interested in Asian the- ments speak for themselves with insufficient common- atre and culture. and those Simply interested in under- tary, the book could have benefited greatly from more standing world artistic traditions in a broader context. detailed explanations to complement and clarify points -review by Dassia Posner made in the various interviews, more careful documenta- tion in the introductory section. more information on the context in which she met and chose each of the 'See Kathy Foh'v's article in the last issue of Puppetry interviewees, as well as conventional scholaily opinion International. in the cases where the interviewees provide conflicting 1 Letter by Mimi Herbert to John Bell. 17 May 2002. p. 1. information. Even so. the valuable and carefully-com- The rise of wayang go/ek iii West Java is almost piled information in the book as a whole overcomes the universally associated with the rise of Islam and as a minor lack ofcohesion. major aid in its dissemination. As with mosthigh-qualitybooksthat deal withpup- f \/,lof th „Pu/,/1.t /W , p. 211. petry, this book will be of immense interest to the puppetry community, but will also appeal to a broader audi- 4 /bid., p. 74. 114.

Tears of Joy Theatre and Marie Levenson Present

J WO b/70 rids (The Dybbuk) ' t. 80

The UNIMA-USA Citation-Winning Production! 414,7/ 9-2 Gutsy_ remarkable... striking. Tears of Joy pulls it 1,15&/ 11 ,-- 7 off." - The Oregonian , *1 "Proves that puppet theater isn't just for kids anymore." - Willamette Week THE LANGUAGE oF "Superb, dramatic... the production explores the thoughts that are often hidden from words." THE PUPPET - The Downtowner "A completely fresh and accessible interpretation of book brings together the most classic piece of Jewish theatre." This landmark - Laurie Rogoway, Jewish Federation 19 top puppetry performers, artists "Most successful. an excellent use of puppet and scholars from three continents, theatre imagery." - George Latshaw, Puppetry Journal and is full of beautiful pictures. Available on Tour Starting 2003 $12.45 per copy For Information , Contact: \ (includes shipping in U.S.) Janet Bradley, Tears of Joy Theatre 503-248-0557; [email protected] UNIMA-USA Come to A pince where love cm,nor die. 1404 Spring St. NW, Atlanta , GA 30309 48 VIDEO REVIEW

PUPPETRY: Worlds of Imagination 2()01,44 minutes, $99.95, Speckled Koi Productions, available through The Cinema Guild, 212-685-6242, ISBN 0-7815-0917-3.

puppeteers as we watch them at work. This video is an important addition to any collection on contemporary theatre. And that's not just puppet theatre. As the documentary makes clear, puppetry has escaped the pretty little box of the Punch and Judy stage and is now an integral element of human theatre productions. It is, as Michael Curry- puppet builder for the Olympics. Times Square and Disney's Lion King- points out on the video, another tool of theatre along with lights. music, costumes and makeup. It's a tool especially helpful when theatre artists want to cast off the con- fines of theatre realism to explore fantastic, stylized or gigantic ideas. The documentary provides a well-rounded set Ralph Lee's Psyche of proof points, including visits to a diverse set of contemporary artists. In addition to Curry. who of- The late Lenny Suib loved to tell the story of a woman who fers the largest and most pageant-oriented work seen on the called his puppet theatre, asking if that weekend's perfor- documentary. the viewer visits theatre artists Basil Twist, Ralph mance would be suitable for her child. "That all depends," Lee, Janie Geiser, and others. Lenny responded, "on the age of your child." When the Twist, the New York-based artist behind the highly ac- woman said that her child was one year old. Lenny tried to claimed Symphonie Fantastique. based on the music of Hec- be diplomatic. "Well." he said. "perhaps one is a bit young tor Berlioz, talks candidly about how he came to create and for puppets." "What do you mean?" the woman snapped in- develop his absolutely original work. in which fabrics, mir- dignantly. "1 brought him to your theatre last year and he had tors, mylar and other materials, moved through an enormous a wonderful time!" tank of water, become puppets in a show that is abstract, ka- That story used to epitomize the state of puppetry and leidoscopic, constantly surprising, and like nothing the pup- the regard- or lack thereof- with which it was held by audi- pet world had seen before. The show is the theatrical equiva- ences. But the tide has definitely turned in the last few years. lent ofan ink-blot test, in which audiences use their imagina- Broadway producers work puppets into mainstream hits in- tions to complete the animations that Twist provides, thereby cluding The Producers and Into the Woods. International cel- becoming collaborators in the theatrical process. The docu- ebrations from the Olympics to the Times Square millen mentary identifies influences including Mirc, and Kandinsky, nium celebration are best remembered for their giant pup- and Twist explains the ties between puppetry, music and dance pets. Television shows- sometimes with a disappointing lack that inspired him. Where the mechanisms of puppetry have of taste- turn to puppets when they want to be "edgy" and typically included strings, hands, rods, and, now. electronics, provocative. Whatever contemporary puppetry is, it is not Twist adds another: water, showing us how he pushes water your father's Kukla, Fran and Ollie. with plexiglass to, in turn , push his aquatic puppets . Which is the point made and explored by Puppetry: Meanwhile , Ralph Lee , director of The Mettawee River Worlds oflmagination, anew video documentary by the team Company, demonstrates an extraordinarily rich mixture of tra- of Michael Malkin and Joshua Malkin. The video is unique dition and innovation. His works are based in the narrative in providing a contemporary view of puppetry, defining what tradition of the theatre and typically take up classical. espe- makes today's puppetry different, and taking the viewer back- cially mythic, themes. Unlike countless others mining this ma- stage for insightful comments by and about today's master terial, Lee and Mettawee use inventive, stylized puppets PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL 49

and production designs that mix people and puppets in Skillfully conceived, written, directed and produced, unexpected ways . They present their polished produc- Puppetry : Worlds of Imagination is a joy to watch : a feast tions to outdoor audiences throughout upstate New for the eyes, food for mind and soul. It is a necessary state- York, passing the hat after the performance much in ment on the state of puppetry today. the mannerof old-time traveling shows. The venue and -review by Mark Levenson the format may be traditional, but the productions employ a dialect of the language of the puppet that is completely contemporary. A visit to the Jim Henson International Festival of Puppet Theatre- with commentary by Festival or- ganizers Leslee Asch and Cheryl Henson- provides a broad range of glimpses into contemporary puppetry, puppetry that is both shaping the tastes of today's audiences and inspiring many of today's artists to produce tomorrow's works. New York City's Greenwich Village Halloween parade- for which Twist, Lee and Curry have all worked- provides yet another window into the wonder of the art. And artist Janie Geiser allows us to enter her classroom at the California Insti- tute of the Arts to watch the next generation of puppeteers as they train. Michael Curry

Publications from UNIMA-USA-

UNIMA-USA has made available a Ru lF ®66'" :11 limited number otomplete sets of NTERNATIONAL INTER[ Puppetry International «~ Several of the early issues are gone. If you are , new to "Pl," don't miss this opportunity to own a complete collection!

TECHNOLOGY AND PERFOHMANCE ISSUE •Ms.*"*, •Momata Shiva...Ims The set of 11 magazines is $60.00 + $4,00 for postage (media mail rate) 111"111 jill'll lilli,1 1- 2fHE WINNERS THE CENTER FOR PUPPETRY ARTS has published a charming LIRCLE and informative catalog for their exhibit featuring work from %.".-I-- UNIMA Citation-winning productions -./.'....= -

A complete list of winners by year is included. $9.95 ($8.95 for ~~4.1-4 Ir-- citation winners) includes postage.

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/ f +AIIW. seni»%=... .**25/a 20+49*0Aww 4 Subject: UNIMA USA Message Board Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2002 offers 25 years of Please check out the NEW MESSAGE BOARD at the Theatrical Design Experience UNIMA-USA web site: for your production needs http://www.unima-usa.org It's a new feature designed to connect puppeteers from around the world- an opportunity to exchange informa- www. renaissanceartist.com tion on tours here and abroad. Visit it frequently and add your information.

also offers Thank you, Adult-Style Performances Donald Devet, UNIMA-USA Web Master 52 PUPPETRY INTERNATIONAL

~*~OWBRIDGE ~_In Memoriam Born Wroxeter, England, January 13. 1929. Died Riverton. - New Zealand, January 3,20()2.

After an epiphany at around the age of forty, Leslie de- A fanatic of all things puppet, opera or Shakespeare. voted the rest of his life to puppet opera, pouring every avail- Leslie subscribed to many magazines and organizations. He able cent into creating his productions and travelling to pup- was a member of UNIMA forover thirty years. Leslie was a pet festivals all around the world in the hope of performing lovely, kind man- if not a little eccentric- who will be re- them. On his travels, he bought beautiful pieces of fabric, membered by his puppetry colleagues for his passion for his silks. brocades and items ofjewelry which he lovingly hand- craft and his mischievous sense of humor. stitched together to create garments for his "performers," the Leslie led an isolated existence not only in his choice choicest pieces being reserved for the sumptuous vestments of occupation but the location ofhis home in Riverton which of his beloved Leading Soprano. At one point, inspired by is a small township in the farthest south of New Zealand, the Water Puppets of Vietnam, Leslie purchased the remote Few people understood or appreciated Leslie's unique vi- Forks Lodge, in Westland National Park near Franz Josef sion for puppet opera nor his enthusiasm in sharing it, His Glacier. where he hoped to combine his interests in tourism, weekly routine consisted of one day mowing his 1/4 acre of opera and water puppets. His idea was to perform his puppet lawn, one day making oakes:md jam, one day letter writing, operas in the spa pool to lodge guests. a day in town shopping, visiting the library and attending to In 31 years Leslie created 77 operas and he made pri- business, and three days working on his latest opera pro- rate videos of 35 of them . He made a video of Rigc)letto duction . On his final day, he had just finished mowing his which he sent to the Scott Base in Antarctica. His puppets are vast lawn and indicated to his next-door neighbor that he in collections around the world- a fact of which he was very felt unwell and went inside to rest. The neighbor checked proud. He travelled to festivals in Australia, China, Mauritius, on him a short time later and found that Leslie had gently Kenya, Pakistan, Iran, Poland, Japan, South Korea. Portugal, expired in his armchair. surrounded by his beloved puppets Croatia and the UK, sometimes being accepted to perform. and vast collection of opera CDs . The last major festival he attended was the UNIMA 200() Worid Puppet Congress in Magdeburg, Germany where he -obituary by Anne Forbes ( excerpted) performed Absaloin & Etery al a local cafe .

MIX ~111]T, theatremaker and internationally- His career, starting at the age of ten in his native Ger- renowned master of the art of puppetry, passed away at his many, spanned six decades and produced an extraordinary home in Sutton, Quebec on July 15,2002, at the age of 70. body of work. He was a master of his craft. In the words of a Mirbt is probably best known for his landmark produc- colleague, "He could make a pencil cry." But it was his vision lions of Buchner's Woyzeck ( 1974, 1988) and Strindberg's The and startling originality of thought thut carried him on a life- Dreamplay/Le Songe (1977). Both productions originated at long quest to break the boundaries of conventional theatre the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and have toured Canada through the use of structure, image and what he termed the and Europe, including the Edinburgh Festival. His produc- "totemic object." tions of musical theatre include Stravinsky ' M Histoire dll His work is astonishing in its scope, starting from the tra- SoldaL Brecht/Weill ' s Happy End, Frederic Rzewski ' s ditionalstring puppetandenlarging totheuse ofabstractsculp- Antigone, de Falla's Maese Pedro and Timothy Findley's First lure. From large scale opera to intimate fairytale, his work Fable. Berlioz's L'Enfa,ice dit Christ C 1980) opened Festival carried adarkstrainthroughwhichalightshone, anambigu- Canada at the National Arts Centre (1997). ity that often puzzled, but always sought completion through His most recent works were a collaboration with German his audience. composer Gerhard Stablen Uferlinien-Shorelines-Rives (Ger- He will be remembered by his many friends and colleagues many, 2000), and with Quebec composer Alain Trudel, Le for his integrity and his uncompromising vision, for the chal- Clianift'-0 ( Place des Arts, Montreal , 2001 ). Felix Mirbt's lenges hedemanded of himselfandothersandforhisvery work has frequently been exhibited and has received a nomi- great generosity of spirit. nation at the Dora Mavor Moore Awards, an UNIMA Cita- Felix is survived by his wife Almut Ellinghaus and his tion for Excellence, and first prizes at Radio Canada (1'Heure sisters Hildemarie, Marianne and Barbara :ind their families. du Point) and the Quadiennial in Prague. artwork: Petey Periale What's new at the center for puppetry arts

The New Directions Series offers diverse works to the mind. Join us May , enthrall the imagination and engage F-* B.///4 - 16-18,2003, as Blair Thomas presents for your consideration y ... I - / d Drum-sticks, Fiddle-sticks: 3 Works, which includes "The Little Altar of Don Cristobal," inspired by Federico g Garcia Lorca and the Catalan puppet tradition. i <*

to With classic tales like 7-he Velveteen Rabbit and ,% innovative productions like Weather Rocks/, the -015 Family Series provides a wide array of puppetry o experiences. Take a leap back in time and trace the S pre-historic steps of Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, and 2 other colossal creatures, as Jon Ludwig directs 4 Q Ditiosaurf,I April 10 - June 22,2003.

Wonder presents over 350 Puppets: The Power of - shadow - puppets from around the world. This Indian is from puppet, made of goatskin and nearly five feet tall, January 2003 the great Hindu epic The Mahabharata. In Collection Puppetry in Focus: Treasures from Our Global r) Lohman izz- £,-- I * I opens with a talk by museum founder Nancy Staub. r, . fuppetryCenter Arts 1404 Spring Street NW • Atlanta, GA 30309-2820 4.9110 Administrative Office/ 404-873-3089 , ,,-/a"~ImwibA Ticket Sales Office/ 404-873-3391 www.puppet.org ~5.~6-625[~~ ~~0~~ [email protected] *,mUU -ml impaa'XCIS~~ Vincent Anthony, Executive Director - -'. Ily'.Am~.lili Headauarters of UNIMA-USA /=Ii// 1 1% b Va//4///i t , jin -R¢peltoly Theatre ce(26rate~

Susan Vituccit puppet opera, Love's Fo\All See article on page 5.